Now the night rises
by Lunar Resonance
Summary: After surviving a near-fatal confrontation with Soul's murderer, Giriko, Maka and Soul are recruited by the DWMA, an agency committed to eliminating supernatural threats that come from holes in the Rift, the barrier that divides their world's dimension from the supernatural one. Sequel to Now the light falls.
1. I said to my soul, Be still-

The darkness of the rift reaches for Medusa, curling in on itself in greedy coils, simultaneously dense as obsidian and translucent as shadow. In the places where the rift regularly opens and recloses, Earth is visible, only a blurred outline, though it had been enough to fool several witches into wandering into the rift in the beginning. Ghosts of their screams still echo occasionally.

Many other things breathe and sigh from within the rift-beings and monsters that have no names and brim with a power even more ancient than the witches'. The rift only appears to be a few feet wide but Medusa's experiments, along with the fates of the witches that attempted to cross the rift, have proven otherwise.

"I don't want to do this." Crona's voice breaks as they speak, accompanied by a small sniff.

Medusa continues to survey the rift; silence is just as much a punishment for Crona as the other methods she uses. The weight of a witch's soul, laden with human souls, is too much to cross the rift, although lesser beasts and the human souls who sometimes escape are able to enter and move across the rift with no trouble.

"You truly think this will work."

She does not turn at Arachne's voice but a smug smile tugs on the corner of her mouth. "So you accept, then?"

"I would not go that far." The soft whisper of her footsteps cease as Arachne stops somewhere behind Medusa. "Watching you fail has always been a favorite pastime of mine."

"I could say the same." She turns then, spying the trio of spiders beside Arachne. Their presence speaks more than her words and Medusa's mouth twists into a full-blown smirk. "Losing your kishin soul all those months ago was rather unfortunate. And it was quite the loss that you suffered just a few weeks ago."

Arachne meets her taunt with a bored, half-lidded gaze. "I do not mourn a simple soul gatherer."

"But he was your favorite, yes?" Medusa tilts her head to one side, lifting her hand to examine her nails. "You certainly took your time in releasing him when you first met."

A quiet venom runs through Arachne's words. "Get your snakes away from me."

"Only a precaution, sister." She calls back the snakes woven out of darkness with a flick of her fingers. "I would not take kindly to being nearly killed twice, even if it is by family."

A cold smile plays on Arachne's lips. "You should know better than to crawl onto a spider's web, especially if it is to steal."

"I was merely curious about your new demon. He wouldn't have come with me anyway." One snake drapes itself on Medusa's shoulders, dark as pitch save for the long white arrow running down from its head to its tail. She strokes the point of the arrow. "You've made him quite attached to you. Puppetlike, even."

Arachne lifts her shoulders in a delicate shrug. "Precautions."

"One that won't help you when the times comes that you send him to Earth."

"If." Her voice stays cool but Arachne's eyes carry a spark of warning. "I do not offer my help for nothing nor will I salvage anyone's failure."

"And here I thought you were being a loving sister." Medusa's teeth show slightly in her smile as she withdraws something from her sleeve and tosses it onto the ground where it lands with a metallic clang in front of Arachne. "A gesture of goodwill."

Disgust fills Arachne's voice as she toes the sensor away from her. "What is this?"

Medusa ignores the small yelp Crona gives as the sensor rolls towards them. "You were being spied on."

Her eyes narrow. "By who?"

"Humans."

Even as her eyes widen in disbelief, the ice in Arachne's expression remains. "If you wanted a fool to swallow your lies, you chose poorly."

"Out of the many things you are, dear sister, a fool is not one of them," purrs Medusa. She arches an eyebrow in a challenge. "Though you are more than free to walk away now."

Arachne doesn't move, the expression on her face unchanging, though she flicks her gaze towards Crona. "And this machine is the reason for all of this?"

"One of them," answers Medusa. "Though I do admit it piques my curiosity the most."

Arachne makes an amused noise in her throat. "And my spiders?"

"Even though we've been working on it, Crona takes some time to warm up occasionally." Medusa looks at Crona, who recoils at the mention of their name. "It would be unfortunate for that to happen while they cross the rift."

Arachne's expression flickers. "The rift doesn't allow witches to cross even when it opens," she says. "And Crona is your child."

"But born with a human soul," Medusa replies. "Inconvenient at times but it has proven its use."

"Such as?"

Medusa addresses Crona for the first time since they arrived. "Show me."

Crona rises up from where they were crouched on the ground, hand nervously wrapping around their wrist. Their throat bobs up and down as they look from Medusa to Arachne and back again. "Do I-"

"Crona."

"Okay, okay." The words tumble out of Crona's mouth as their hands creep to their head, fingers winding in their hair. "I'll do it."

They are still for a few moments, silence wrapping around them like a shroud; Medusa lifts her hand when Arachne opens her mouth and then a crack rends the air, swallowing Crona's cry as their back splits open.

Disgust ripples across Arachne's face as wings of onyx erupt from Crona, seizing the air and taking shape as though they were alive. Crona slumps forward once the transformation finishes, though their wings keep them from crumpling to the ground.

Medusa turns to Arachne. "Would you like to see more?"

Arachne's expression of distaste deepens as she dips her head to her spiders. "If my spiders come across my kishin soul, they will leave to bring it back," she warns as they move forward to join Crona.

"Naturally." Medusa moves to Crona, whose gaze is rooted on the ground.

She waits until she is standing in front of them to speak. Her voice comes out in a murmur, almost gentle. "Look at me."

Crona does not fight her orders this time, quietly raising their head to meet her stare. They flinch as Medusa's finger grazes their cheek, but even as they tremble underneath her hand, Crona leans into her touch.

Medusa presses a nail lightly against Crona's skin. "Make me proud."


	2. Incipient

Adj; beginning to exist or appear, in an initial stage.

* * *

November

* * *

He misses sleep.

It's like a song that dances on the edge of his mind, a half-forgotten memory he almosts grasps until it twists out of reach. When he'd first returned to the land of the living, there had been a part of Soul that believed he could reach it, if only he stretched out a little further, tried a little harder, but the light of the rising sun had always spilled across Orcus Hollow before he could succeed.

As a ghost, it's not like Soul needs sleep or anything else; he feels solid to himself, which had made adjusting to the world even more difficult in the beginning, and he only breathes out of habit, though recently he has noticed he sometimes goes hours without making the familiar breathing motion. Pain is the only bodily sensation that remains, other than the heat he feels in his hand occasionally, the hand Maka held when they jumped from that tree in the afterlife.

A light snore from Maka brings him back from his thoughts and he starts when he finds her face only a foot from his, that he's somehow drifted over her bed again for the third time this week somehow. Gritting his teeth, Soul floats back to his spot by her desk and attempts to root himself there as best as someone with no body can. The blank, dreamy state he is able to work himself into nowadays is nothing close to sleeping but it's better than the nights when he had nothing to do but wander the outside of Maka's house as far as their bond would allow him to go.

Death, like everything, is something that needs time to get used to, he supposes, though he knows the link he has with Maka is strange at best, even for a ghost. He lifts his hand in front of his face, the one that feels like it's burning when she's angry or sad but fills with a warmth like sunlight when she's happy or amused. From what Maka has told him, he knows that her hand feels cool when his runs hot, that it had turned freezing once when they weren't talking, something which drills him with guilt, even though he'd had every right to be hurt.

It's the same hurt (healing but very much alive) that makes him wonder sometimes if she still regrets being bonded to him.

His hands clench against the thought before Soul can follow it any further. Maka is nothing if not sincere in everything she says and does to the point of brutal honesty-when she'd told him she wanted him to stay, that she meant it for everything, the words had been louder than his doubt for once and he believed her.

Taking a breath he doesn't feel, he closes his eyes, an action that has no point except to shut the world out. In lieu of sleeping, Soul runs through his memories, which is a poor substitute for dreams, but it's all he has. Although he would have rather died again than face him, the encounter with Giriko unlocked most of his memories, and he has spent most nights examining those memories and trying to remember how certain foods tasted or how it had felt when Wes clapped a hand on his shoulder after he mastered a particularly difficult composition.

Soul's sigh is soft and quiet. His life had been short and unremarkable, eaten up by doubt, rigid expectations, and mediocrity in a ruthless kind of feedback loop. But Wes was the part of his life that he would go back for, even if it was only to say goodbye.

Instead, he'd had to say his goodbye to a silent tombstone. The Evanses had a family section buried behind rows of hedges in the far corner of the cemetery, which explained why it had taken Blair, with her keen eyesight, so long to find his grave. Wes was buried directly across from Soul, grave decorated with a simple headstone that matched Soul's. Living to the ripe old age of ninety-seven, Wes had died a full fifteen years before Soul was freed from his cocoon in the afterlife.

Seeing his brother's name etched in stone, birth and death dates listed neatly below, had been what finally made Soul's death feel real. Knowing he was dead was something he had come to terms with months ago, but memories were the threads that tied his being together and it had been hard to feel dead without them.

From his lips fall a laugh, dry and nearly inaudible. He feels it now.

A tiny jolt sends the familiar prick of grief through the insubstantial shade he calls a body now, but since tears are impossible, he shoves himself into his memories. He's nearly lost himself when it happens again, bigger and electric.

Nothing but the soft darkness mixed with the moonlight streaming through Maka's window greets Soul as he opens his eyes. Still, he floats up to the ceiling and casts his gaze carefully across the room, feeling the pangs of the jolt disappear as abruptly as it arrived.

Soul waits for a long moment and again for another.

He jumps slightly when the night's silence is interrupted by a sudden scratching noise before recognizing it as the branches of the tree beside Maka's window grazing against the glass. With a glance towards Maka, who continues to breathe in quiet and rhythmic breaths, he relaxes and eases back to his spot in the room.

His gaze moves back to Maka as he attempts to force himself into his state of vague semi-consciousness; he watches as her chest rises and falls with a strange sense of longing and melancholy. How it would feel to be alive is not something Soul allows himself think about often, but he can't stop himself from wondering how it'd feel to have Maka's fingers interlocked with his.

The jolt that strikes his chest sets his ears ringing and he doubles over, voice snatched from his throat as pain blazes through him, worse than when Giriko's blade ripped his soul from his body. Razor sharp blades needle Soul from the inside out with a boiling intensity that makes him claw at his skin for relief, but the pain only deepens, wrapping around his body like a vice. Distantly, beyond the ringing that scrapes against his eardrums, he hears his name being called over and over.

Soul's arms are wrapped around himself when the pain vanishes as quickly as it had come, just like the time before. Silence is a heavy weight against his head as his ears continue to ring and he works to move, say something, do anything.

"Soul?" Maka blinks drowsily at him, head half-raised above her pillow. "What's wrong?"

Finding his voice is a gargantuan feat. "You didn't feel that?"

Maka's words are muddled by sleep. "Feel what?"

"I-" He breaks off when he spies Maka massaging her hand-her fingers are shaking and are not a color especially suitable for someone alive. He swallows back his words. "Nothing."

For a moment, Maka eyes him with an exhausted stare and then she sits up, rubbing her eyes. "You're not a very good liar when you're put on the spot, you know," she informs him as she swings her legs over the edge of the bed and rises. Her hair, which stands up slightly in all directions, gives her the appearance of wearing a halo. "You shut down instantly."

The small snort he makes pierces something fragile inside him. "All of my body systems are shut down."

Maka's laugh is light as she pauses in front of him. Moonlight paints her skin with a silvery tint as she squints up at him blearily, still half-asleep. "Humor won't get you out of this one."

A familiar sensation that has nothing to do with the shocks stirs to life in his throat, killing the relief Maka's presence brings. He lifts his shoulders in a shrug and presses his hands into his pockets as the feeling crawls down to his stomach. "Just thinking about tomorrow."

Immediately, the look on Maka's face softens and the lie sinks to the bottom of his gut like a stone. She steps closer to him and he resists the urge to move away. "Stein is strange but we're going to get answers."

He nods, unsure if he's unable to look away from Maka or if he simply doesn't want to. She's closer than he's let her be in weeks, eyes tinted with the same silver as her skin as she gazes at him. "Everything's going to be fine."

For a second, Soul considers telling her everything that happened ( that's been happening, his mind amends as the feeling in his throat flares again) but then his eyes fall to her hand, shivering almost indiscernibly and half-raised as if to touch him.

"Of course it is." He kicks off, up and away from her. "If we can get past your dad."

Her nose scrunches up as she grimaces. "Don't remind me."

He solidifies his retreat with nonchalance and sarcasm. "That's what I'm here for."

Relief mixed with disappointment sweeps through Soul as Maka laughs again and she turns back to pad across the room, flopping back onto her bed with an unceremonious grunt. Her words are nearly indistinct as she speaks. "I have the feeling he's going to go on the warpath again."

The feeling dims the further he drifts away but a sharp hollowness digs in his chest. "If worse comes to worst, you can ask Black Star to set another fire."

"Funny." She doesn't lift her head, already more asleep than awake.

"I try." For a beat, Soul hesitates and then he floats over to lift the blanket over Maka, who yawns her thanks into her pillow.

"I won't wake you again." He says the words more to himself than to Maka as he moves away, but she raises her arm to waggle a finger at him.

Maka's voice is muffled against the pillow but her words are clearer than before. "You wake me as many times as you need to, okay?"

Guilt gnaws at Soul with sawlike teeth but it's not enough to erase the feeling squirming inside of him. "All right."

Maka yawns. "Good night."

"Night."

He waits until Maka slips back into the steady breathing of sleep to take his spot again, although there is no hope of finding even the illusion of rest in his memories. Pulling his knees close to his chest, Soul presses his hands against the ache in his throat, partly out of the hope he can crush it completely, though mostly because he needs to do something with the restless energy or he'll begin to feel it pulling apart the fabric of his mind.

His hands drop to his sides when the feeling finally starts to lessen but Soul stays hunched over, eyes fixed on the floor. He doesn't know where it came from or why the feeling exists, only that it first emerged the moment he took Maka's hands when they were trapped in the alley filled with poltergeists and had re-emerged every time he's "touched" her afterwards.

Soul doesn't allow himself to think much on this topic either, but he can never suppress the memory of hunger that springs to mind when the feeling erupts into being.

He lifts his head carefully and watches the moonlight on the ceiling. The fact that the feeling now arises without a catalyst, even as he maintains and increases the distance he's carved between himself and Maka, fills him with a certain self-disgust while a quiet horror slowly builds higher and higher every time he lets his mind go lax and he returns to find himself face to face with Maka.

Closing his eyes again, Soul tries to reach the sleep he can never find.

(When I asked you to stay, I meant it for everything.)

* * *

Maka's heart is already pounding when her alarm blares in her ear and rips her unceremoniously from her dream. A vague sense of panic stays, though the dream's hold on her evaporates; shoving her head under her pillow, she ignores the shrill ringing of her alarm for a minute before rolling over, reaching for her phone without looking. A soft swear falls from her lips as she knocks it off her nightstand instead and she hauls herself from her bed with an irritated grunt to snatch her phone from the floor.

She rubs her face with one hand, mumbling Soul's name as she switches off her alarm. When he doesn't reply, she looks up and frowns when she finds the room empty. "Soul?"

Her frown deepens when the silence remains unbroken; her hand isn't twisting with pain or cold so Soul can't be too far away, but the lack of a reply chafes against a hurt whose existence she can no longer deny. She chews on her bottom lip and stares at the space in front of her with a concentrated look until her phone begins to buzz with her second alarm. Starting, she blinks once and then exhales loudly, kicking away the blanket pooled around her feet and pulling clothes from her closet before heading to the bathroom.

The memories from last night bleed back into Maka's thoughts as she finishes fixing her hair, eyeing her reflection with a mix of agitation and dejection as she puts down her brush and drums her fingers against the sink. Her brain had been too muddled by sleep for her to question Soul too closely, but it Is obvious now that their meeting with the DWMA today isn't the reason she'd been woken up last night with her hand convulsing so badly that the cold still cuts through her skin when she stretches her hand.

She threads her fingers through her hair absentmindedly, blowing out a breath in frustration. In the aftermath of nearly being dragged back into the afterlife, Soul had stayed close, like he used to before she kicked him into forced oblivion. He Is still dead set in his refusal to attempt possession again (no matter how much Maka prodded or asked.) However, he had hovered beside her when they were out, and sat on the edge of her bed as she did her homework with her books splayed across the bedspread, not quite close enough to touch but enough that their bond took on the soft rhythm of a heartbeat. It was during those times that they were able to talk freely and that Maka was reminded of everything she told herself she didn't miss during the months she'd shut him out.

A tightness tugs at her throat. Now that she is beginning to unweave the layers of pain and scars she had cocooned herself in for so long, all she finds that surrounds her these days is growing space and invisible lines-Tsubaki is engulfed in college and she hasn't seen much of Black Star outside of school ever since she came home the morning after Halloween to find her father and the entirety of Orcus Hollow's police department on her driveway.

Maka's eyes find her reflection in the mirror again. And Soul rarely comes closer than a couple arm's lengths away and sometimes there is something distant and forced in his voice when he talks to her. There are other times when Maka wakes up to find him floating right above her and a fragile kind of hope bubbles in her chest, one that bursts as soon as Soul realizes she is awake and he moves away. They are stuck in the same dance of too close and too far, though it's was Soul who is leading it now.

And maybe it's what she deserves, her thoughts whisper as Maka's hands curl around the edge of the sink. The words she hurled at him in the swamp still echo in her head, but it was the betrayal on Soul's face as the words hit their mark that hooks its roots in her mind.

She's not selfish enough to think a single apology is enough to fix months of abandonment all at once, though she works everyday to show she means it, starting with the scrapbook hidden under her bed that she's slowly filling with as many articles and pictures of Wes she can find (although the headway she made in tracking Wes had died almost a week ago.) Piecing together his life solely from articles about Wes' ascension in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and his statement on his brother's murder wasn't an easy task, especially since he had virtually disappeared from the map a few years after Soul died. Since then, the only news she's been able to find of Wes are a few mentions in the archives of the Orcus Hollow Tribune's social section, but even then the news is never about him nor accompanied by any photos of Wes.

Her hands drop from the sink as Maka meets her eyes in the mirror again. But defeat isn't something she cedes easily, and she's not planning on allowing it in either the search for Wes or the distance between her and Soul.

(Though she doesn't have all that much say in the latter, her mind unhelpfully informs her.)

The knot of anxiety in her stomach climbs to the surface of Maka's thoughts when she returns to her room and finds it empty instead of Soul tinkering with her iPod or drifting somewhere near the ceiling. She hesitates in the doorway for a moment before striding in and plucking her backpack from her chair, marching across the hallway and down the stairs with gritted teeth.

A loud honk from the kitchen interrupts her thoughts and forces her to look up. For several moments, Maka stays frozen on the last step of the stairs, eyeing the atrocity that is the neon green and purple clown costume Spirit wears before speaking. "What?"

The tomato red wig perched on Spirit's head matches the slightly lopsided red ball he has for a nose, which bobs up and down as he answers. "The children's hospital in Moricio needed volunteers for their Thanksgiving celebration and as the sheriff in training, it was my duty to help," he says. "They also have an unidentified victim in an unusual death case who may be from Orcus Hollow, so I'm going to head to their department after the hospital visit."

Maka raises an eyebrow as she drops her backpack on the chair next to hers and takes the bowl Spirit offers to her. "You're going to a police department looking like a serial killer that dresses up as a clown?"

Even with the wig and nose obscuring most of his face, Spirit still manages to give her the expression that makes him resemble a sad puppy. "This was the costume I wore for your first Halloween."

"And now I understand why you used to tell me that I wouldn't stop crying when you were taking pictures," she says, sitting down and pulling the milk towards her. She catches a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye as she begins to eat, but to her surprise, Soul makes no comment on Spirit's outfit as he drifts into the kitchen and hovers next to the microwave. He stays quiet even as Spirit's oversized shoes squeak with an obnoxious whine as he sits across from Maka.

Somehow, Soul's silence grates on her patience even more than his distance, and she bites down on her irritation by moving her attention back to Spirit. "They're going to run screaming from you."

Her father carefully rights his nose, which is somewhat difficult since his hands are swallowed up by oversized gloves. "Most of the children are older than you were when I wore this."

"Fear of a clown is eternal." Her words prompt a look of dismay from Spirit and a light snort from Soul, which she doesn't acknowledge. "When do you have to be at the hospital?"

"Nine," Spirit answers, looking down at himself with a twist of a frown. He pinches the lacy frill of his collar as his frown grows. "But this is the only costume I have to wear."

"Maybe," Maka cuts in as she leans forward casually, "You can go to the station to see if you could borrow something from one of your buddies. I can drive to school and-"

"Absolutely not," he interrupts, shaking his head. "I see what you're doing." He wags a gloved finger at her. "You're still grounded."

"It's been three weeks!" Maka sends flecks of milk across the table as she lets her spoon fall in her cereal with a clink and glares up at Spirit. "That's an eternity in punishment time."

Spirit doesn't flare with excitability like he usually does as he leans back in his chair. His gaze briefly traces the ceiling before he looks to Maka. "An eternity was me waiting for you to come home, wondering if this was the time you wouldn't." The lightness in his eyes is gone.

A flush crawls across Maka's face as she looks back down at her cereal and fiddles with her spoon. The conversation she and Spirit had after she returned home the morning after Halloween covered in mud, blood running down the side of her face, and refusing to say more than she had been out in the forest, hadn't been a pretty one. They've been stuck in an uneasy standoff ever since, comprised of awkward conversations, terse silence, and sporadic arguments that only include the vaguest of references to Maka's disappearance and the other past Halloween incidents. Occasionally, they have fallen into something like normal conversation, usually when it was either too early or late for her to care about putting up the front of an angry teenager, but it never lasted long.

Heaviness twists deep inside of her chest. Beyond everything churning on the surface, the real problem lies in the fact that there were too many years of talking without saying anything - it had been easy enough to believe the truth she had crafted for herself, that being surrounded by people meant she wasn't alone. But everything in that illusion is shattered now, the space around her haunts and she doesn't know if she'll ever have enough time to close it.

It takes a moment for Maka to swallow the surge of guilt in her throat and summon back her indignance. She crosses her arms as she looks back up at Spirit. "Well, how long am I grounded then?"

He mirrors her tone this time, straightening up in his chair. "For long as I say," he shoots back.

Spirit holds his ground for all of ten seconds before he deflates, wig drooping precariously from his head. "A month?" he asks, and then he shrugs a little helplessly. "I don't know."

She turns incredulous. "You don't know?"

"You spoiled me." Spirit pinches the bridge of his nose. "I've never had to ground you before this. You always learned your lesson before I had to."

The guilt returns. "First time for everything?" she offers.

"That's a nice try." Spirit gives her a sliver of a smile at that but his tone is firm. He picks up his coffee mug and takes a sip with some difficulty. "The answer is still no."

Her hands clench, anger burning, acidic and completely unjustified, but it bubbles in her chest all the same. Words spring to her tongue but she knows now what words can cost so she bites them back, uncurls her hands and returns to her breakfast. "Fine."

There's a pause from Spirit; his mouth opens slightly, as if to speak, but he nods after a moment instead of commenting on Maka's sudden reversal. The rustle as Spirit scans through the morning paper and the clinking of Maka's spoon against her bowl breaks up the quiet between them but does nothing to melt the tension of the room. After a few minutes, Spirit makes a quiet attempt to re-start the conversation, which dies with the one-syllable answer Maka gives.

The gaze of their silent audience weighs heavily on the back of Maka's neck but she keeps her attention fixed on the whorls of the table's surface, fingers pinching the neck of her spoon too tightly. Underneath her anger is a familiar resentment that throbs like a fresh burn; after all, while it was her doing in how long and how far she had sealed herself away, it had been Spirit's doubt and her mother's rejection that buried her there in the first place.

A nearly inaudible exhale escapes from Maka as she swishes at the increasingly soggy flakes in her bowl-disbelief isn't something she can blame her parents for. There is no reason to believe ghosts are anything more than the figments of a frightened child and the ramblings of the eccentric, but the desertion when she needed them most continues to write itself in her bones and cling to her thoughts. She can't forgive the empty space that stands in lieu of her mother, and there is no closure with Spirit when she knows nothing has changed nor is there any hope for it changing when it's about things that can't be talked about.

She pushes a flake to the bottom of the bowl and slowly crushes it into pieces with the back of her spoon. And it's this resentment that keeps her from moving forward without looking back; it was easy to bury along with everything else, but now that she is learning to release the ghosts that turned her present into a crypt for the past, it's a live wire she can't let go of, no matter how much she wants to.

Maka stays at the table until she can no longer take the unspoken words hanging in the air. Her chair scrapes loudly across the floor as she rises from the table and places her bowl in the sink with a clatter. "I'll wash the dishes when I come back."

She sweeps from the kitchen without waiting for Spirit to reply and takes her time brushing her teeth, staring resolutely at the sink instead of her reflection in the mirror. Her growing bad mood lifts some, however, when she emerges from the bathroom and returns to the kitchen to find the dishes clean and lined up on the drying rack and Soul waiting by the microwave. She gives him a slight nod and scoops up her backpack; Soul hovers behind as they head out of the house, which isn't unexpected, but the move still makes Maka bite down a little harder on her tongue.

The crunch of the gravel underneath her shoes as she walks down the driveway to where Spirit waits in his squad car mixes with the static of his police scanner droning from his open window. Her steps slow as Maka draws near, gaze moving from the back seat where she has been sitting to the front seat. She hesitates when she reaches the car and then she pulls the door open, sliding into the front seat.

Spirit's surprise is obvious even as he says nothing, twisting the key in the ignition and easing out of the driveway, though he checks his rearview mirrors a little too carefully as he backs out. He nods to the radio after they've been driving for a few minutes. "Music?"

She shakes her head. "It's fine, you can change it if you want."

The muted rush of the wheels against asphalt and the buzz of the oldies station Spirit switches to isn't quite enough to cover up the stilted awkwardness in the car. Maka's fingers pull at a loose thread hanging from her sleeve. She was born for movement and action, but silence is a habit built over years and is as hard to break as any other, no matter how tightly words press against her lips. Inching forward is different than standing in one place though, she reasons as she searches for something to say.

"I got a phone call from your mother." Spirit's voice is distant and then his words sink into the layers of Maka's thoughts.

Her seatbelt bites into her neck as she jolts upward. "What?" She blinks rapidly, looking from Spirit to in front of her and back again. "When?"

Spirit doesn't answer right away, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. "Halloween," he answers finally.

"That was three weeks ago!" She's not as angry as she sounds, struggling to organize her thoughts and words. Everything inside of her is a jumbled mess of dreamlike haziness and the sharp edges of newly unearthed memories."Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"There were other things happening that day and I-," Spirit breaks off, shoulders set defensively, though guilt bleeds through his words. "I wasn't sure how to break the news once...everything else had settled."

"Sooner would have been a good start," Maka retorts, although impatience takes out all of the bite from her answer. She takes a breath and swallows; she's not sure where to look or what to hope for. "What did she want to talk about?"

"It wasn't a very long conversation." Spirit keeps his eyes on the road as he speaks. His fingers thrum faster against the wheel. "She wanted to see how you are, mostly."

"Over five years and she calls to ask that?" Maka looks out of the window, voice rising higher with the laugh she bites back. There's a brief lull in the car and then she looks back at Spirit. "What else did she say?"

Spirit's fingers still completely and if Maka hadn't been looking at him, she would have missed the way his eyes flick towards her for an instant and then back to the road. "That was all."

The transparency of Spirit's expression and the abrupt woodenness of his voice when he's lying are qualities he has failed to unlearn even with two decades on Orcus Hollow's police task force. "You said mostly."

There is something in his hesitation and the way his shoulders tense that makes her stomach twist. She drops the anger she's feigning. "Nothing's happened to her, has it?"

"No, no." Spirit shakes his head rapidly. As he does, the faint purple shadows underneath his eyes become highlighted by the rising sun. Spirit is silent for another moment and then he speaks quickly. "She wants to see you."

A million words spring to her lips. "Oh."

"She's out of the country for the moment," Spirit rushes to add. He shifts in his seat slightly to look at Maka. "Probably until spring."

"Oh," Maka repeats. She leans back in her seat and hooks a lock of hair behind her ear. The dreaminess in her mind has taken over; her thoughts feel distant, she feels distant. Shock has taken away her ability to process or react but she knows Spirit is waiting for her to say something more. "I see."

Spirit opens his mouth, closes it for a minute, and opens it again. "And how do you feel about it?"

"I don't know."

A furrow creases his brow and it's a minute before Spirit glances back at Maka. "What do you think then?"

"I don't know. " Frustration brings her back to her body. From her thoughts, something like static lights down to the rest of her body, sharpening reality with a numbing kind of clarity that presses down too harshly on her senses and makes her irritable. "Is there a way I'm supposed to feel or think about it?"

"No, but-" He breaks off. When Spirit speaks again, he speaks carefully, although there is something urgent to the worry clouding his expression. "You're not obligated to say yes, either."

It's not an unreasonable thing to say and distantly Maka recognizes this. Still, she can't keep herself from crossing her arms and adding, "But I don't have to say no, either."

The space inside the car is filled by the angry blares of car horns coming from Death City High School's parking lot as students fight for to be one of the few that don't have to park their car in the muddy field that used to act as the baseball team's practice grounds. Spirit speaks as they inch their way down the line of cars clogging up the carpool lane. "No, you don't."

His quiet acceptance mixes in guilt with the growing eddy of emotions drowning Maka's mind in a way anger or even sadness would not. In that instant, Maka nearly opens her mouth to take back her words, but then a particularly loud horn peals from behind and both she and Spirit jump. Instead of speaking, Maka hoists up her backpack and digs around for an imaginary paper, toes tapping an impatient beat against the soles of her shoes.

When they finally reach the front of the line, however, she doesn't immediately move to leave, fiddling with her backpack zipper. "I'm not deciding anything yet," she says after a moment. She speaks more to her backpack than to Spirit. "I just need to think about it for a while."

There's not much she can tell from Spirit, except for the way he turns towards her. "I figured as much." He hesitates. "But you do have someone around when you don't want to just think about it anymore."

"I know," she answers quickly, swallowing against the sudden lump in her throat. She glances at Spirit-it's from him that Maka inherited her green eyes, and while they've always looked more blue than hers, today she sees her eyes gazing back at her. "I will."

She twists then and gets out of the car. The air bites at Maka's face with an iron chill generally reserved for the dead of winter as she walks to where Black Star waits for her. Maka doesn't give the police car that same jaunty wave that Black Star does but she does lift a hand as Spirit drives away.

"You've been grounded for so long I thought I was going to see you driving in with that old clunker of yours this week for sure," he declares. Black Star's hair is a glaring orange today, supposedly for Thanksgiving, though the single spike he has carefully gelled his hair into gives him the appearance of a walking traffic cone.

"There was an attempt but it failed obviously." Maka swings her backpack over her shoulder and starts heading towards the school. Between the frigidness of the air and Black Star's energy, there's little room to think for her to think. "And that clunker still beats out the scooter you keep trying to pass off as a motorcycle."

"It's a self-built prototype," he shoots back. "On the basis of pure style, you're already beat."

"And on the basis of who actually has a driver's license, you've been beat."

"Not for long." Black Star shakes his head, hair wobbling dangerously. "Guess who has their driving test in January?"

Maka eyes him skeptically. "Sid's been saying no to a license since last year."

"That was before he needed another busboy at the restaurant." Black Star hooks his hands behind his neck, seemingly impervious to the icy drizzle now misting down on his basketball shorts and tanktop. "And since the sidewalk is too small for my wheels, we both had something to gain by me agreeing to work for him."

She snorts as they walk past the school gates. "Your negotiation skills are bar none."

"Thank you," Black Star says with a grin. "Which means you need to find a way to get yourself ungrounded," he adds on as he wheels around abruptly, jabbing a finger at Maka. "We should have been able to visit Tsu a long time ago."

"You have feet, don't you?" She scowls - not bristling is too much to ask of her already spent patience. "Given the right combination of energy drinks, I'm sure you'd move as fast as any car."

"Maybe, but it's not a theory Nygus is willing to let me test in her lifetime." Black Star bounces on the balls of his toes, ignoring the calls of the campus supervisor on his blatant hair violation of the dress code. "I'd be grounded till I was eighty."

"Aren't you already grounded till then anyways?"

"Yes, but it's for different things at least." The grass of the school lawn squelches under their feet as they head towards the science building and Black Star swivels so he can walk and look at Maka, narrowly avoiding bowling through a group of nervous looking freshmen gathered in the middle of the lawn. He continues to ignore the calls of now two campus supervisors who yell after him with an air of exasperated resignation and lifts his eyebrows, dyed the same eye-watering shade of orange as his hair. "Though I have to say your old man is going overboard with the whole punishment thing for you sneaking out one time."

Rehashing the same topic twice invites a headache so Maka shrugs, concentrating her gaze on looking out for muddy patches in the grass. "I've fought a lot of people, too."

"He gave you a pair of boxing gloves so you wouldn't hurt yourself when you punched them."

"I'm pretty sure it was one of those unconventional parenting techniques at work," she says, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face. Impatience to be done with this topic gnaws on her nerves. "And not him condoning a lifetime of violence."

"Either way, he's never been the strict parent." He studies her just a little too closely as he speaks, eyes narrowing slightly. "Which means he snapped or you did more than just sneak out."

"Or maybe he's just overreacting like people do sometimes." Maka keeps her voice even but her stomach twists into knots. She'd only given Black Star the barest of explanations on why she snuck out, that there had been a sick friend who needed her help, and although he's never said it outright, she knows he doesn't believe her.

The bell for class peals as they move back onto pavement and the swell of students slowly trucking to their respective classes temporarily halts their conversation, but Black Star is nothing if not persistent, ducking between students to keep pace with Maka. "Even so, it wouldn't be for something like sneaking out."

Maka sucks in a breath. "Yes, maybe." A throbbing beats in her temples along with an exhaustion she is aching to be rid of; secrets are draining, especially when she has no choice but to hold onto them. "Remember how you asked me for my dad's old police scanner?"

Black Star's eyebrows knit together at the change in direction. "Yes."

"I still don't know what you did with it."

A beat passes before he answers. "Point taken."

"It's nothing against you," she says quickly, before silence can swallow her words. "I-" She searches for something else to say, something concrete, but everything runs too close to the truth.

"I understand," Black Star says with a stiffness that clearly says he does not. He veers to the right for the weight training rooms, tossing a wave over his shoulder. "See you at lunch."

He disappears into the crowd before Maka can say another word. She watches him go, biting back the spark of frustration on her tongue. Then, she grits her teeth and continues to weave through the crowd. The throbbing in her head intensifies; Black Star pushes until he is well over the line when he's concerned about someone, but it hadn't taken much to shut him down.

Soul speaks for the first time as she turns down a side hallway. "Not the best morning."

A laugh, sharp and dry, bubbles up from her lips as she stops outside her classroom. "You think?"

Her words echo in the hallway and the students lingering at the other end twist to stare at her curiously. In turn, Maka stares them down until they walk away and then she glares up at Soul, silent for a few moments as she weighs the words on her tongue.

"Something's wrong and you won't talk to me and-" Her hands flutter agitatedly as if to reach out (only physical reassurance soothes her anxiety) but she catches herself and crosses her arms around herself, biting back the rest of her words. "What is it?"

Soul's eyes are a brighter shade of red now though there's a strange life that pulses in them now than when his eyes were brown. They beat with something else when he looks at Maka, something she doesn't recognize even though it thrums with a vague familiarity.

It lingers for a moment, Soul leans close, and then Maka blinks and he's distant again. His eyes shift away. "Nothing's wrong."

She drops her voice a half a notch, though she continues to glare. "Do you want me to pretend I'm dumb enough to still believe that?"

His gaze flicks back towards her briefly, surprise erasing his indifference, and then he shrugs. "Death isn't something you can prepare for," he says. "I'm adjusting."

It's a non-answer veiled as a reply but then the warning bell rings and a wave of students keeps her from responding properly. She turns to pull open the classroom door. "All right, then."

Even as he trails in behind her, Soul sounds far away. "Okay."

Maka spends the period alternating between focusing on her paper with a concentration too intense for note-taking and stealing peeks at her desk's faint reflection of the boy only she can see hovering near the ceiling. Towards the end of the period, she abandons all attempts to listen to the teacher, the ink from her pen bleeding through her paper as she doodles circles over and over in the corner of her notes.

Black smears across the tips of her fingers but still she continues to wear the paper down. The catharsis from letting her wounds breathe is gone now, replaced by a cold dread and anxiety at finding how they have tangled together; peeling away the protective layers around herself leaves her aching for contact, only for her to simultaneously discover the walls her secrets had built over where she had buried herself.

There's a soft tearing noise as her paper rips. And being determined not to repeat her mistakes doesn't do much good when the other person is uncooperative.

She lifts her pen and pushes the edges of the hole together. But even in the ashes, something in her had been growing: stunted, broken, but alive. She wouldn't have been able to recognize herself after all these years without it.

Maka lets out the breath she had been holding, rolling her pen between her fingers. She would have to believe that.


	3. Susurrus

Noun; whispering, murmuring, or rustling

* * *

Sunlight burns weakly through iron grey clouds in a muted light, doing little to lift the artificial twilight draped over the world by the incoming storm, while wind kicks up eddies of dirt and debris across the field behind the math building. The low rumble of the wind intensifies into a howl as a sudden rush of air sweeps across the field and into the forest resting behind it. The wind's howl turns into the hollow echoes of a thousand whispers, low and melancholy.

The sound pushes Soul up into a sitting position from where he drifts on his back next to the window outside of Maka's math class. He twists towards the window, avoiding directly looking at the forest. It's not the same forest that he was murdered in, but the static tension and screaming wind of the growing storm is already too familiar, and gazing at the shadows bobbing invitingly between the trees gives Soul the same feeling as a knife sliding underneath his skin.

Instead, he studies the strange translucent color the storm has turned him, cupping his hand and watching the raindrops from the soft drizzle above fall through his fingers and the rest of him. It's uncomfortable in an oddly captivating way to see something solid slice through him without feeling anything. The uncomfortableness wins out eventually and Soul peers over at Maka, who sits in the row of desks by the window, face scrunched in concentration as she works through a problem that uses symbols vaguely reminiscent of the ones he used in his compositions.

His gaze traces the movements of her hand across the paper until they stutter and come to a stop. Maka leans back, tapping the cap of her pen against her fingers as she frowns at the page. Soul finds himself angling to see better without thinking; Maka is mesmerizing in the way she moves even when she is completely still, thoughts dancing in her eyes. Her pen moves to hover over the paper after a few moments and she leans forward again but then her head lifts abruptly, eyes locking with Soul's before he can look away.

Maka's lips part slightly as they stare at each other and something inside Soul clicks. Before he can do anything, however, her attention is called away by the teacher.

The break in eye contact jolts Soul out of his trance and he moves up and away in a rush without thinking. The slanted ebony tiles of the math building's roof are the same as the ones of his parents' mansion-it fills Soul with the sharpest kind of nostalgia as he perches on the roof's edge and pretends the thoughts in his head don't exist (though the burning sensation in his chest tells him he can't ignore them for long).

His head tips back and he stares at the clouds swirling slowly above his head. Out of all of the buildings in the school and Orcus Hollow, the math building is the only thing that remains from his life-the Orcus Hollow that existed when Soul was alive was consumed in a fire twenty years after Giriko murdered him.

It's a sign from above. Even though it's been nearly a century since he heard his voice, Soul can still hear Wes as if he were standing next to him. Wes, believer in auras, omens and all things superstitious, had once attributed Soul sneezing as he was passing the sugar at breakfast and subsequently sending sugar flying everywhere as a harbinger for a snowstorm that closed all the town's roads the next day. Soul had always rolled his eyes whenever Wes mentioned anything related to the supernatural but still indulged him when Wes bought a ouija board from a medium passing through town and insisted on conducting seances in the parlor for a month.

(Though hindsight informs him that he probably shouldn't have scoffed as much as he did at Wes' belief in ghosts.)

Above Soul, the sky darkens suddenly, the wind building into an angry shrieking whose rage he cannot feel. He lets his head drop and imagines how Wes would react to seeing him now, what he would say in response to hearing about everything Soul has gone through.

He wonders if Wes also woke up in a cocoon after he died, whether he's thrashing against silk strands that cling too tightly to his skin or if he's turned into a zombie with a mind full of obliterated memory instead.

Monster, his mind whispers.

Soul's gaze moves to the shadows beckoning to him from the trees across the field, the word crawling down his spine. On his palms, his fingers tap a nervous beat, a habit he was never able to kick when he was alive. Maka's face when she confronted him in the morning swims in his mind, equal parts frustrated and pleading as she did everything but beg him to talk.

And it had almost convinced him, almost persuaded him to shove away his fear of letting down his walls in favor of taking back control from the demons that rule his head. But when Maka had looked at him just now, he realized that it wasn't a burning feeling that's been living inside him but a constant whisper, one word over and over.

Feedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfeedfe-

The word pulses in his chest in a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat. Soul's nails bite into his palms. There is nothing he can say when this is what lives inside him.

With a soft sigh, the drizzle turns into a steady rain, but still Soul can feel none of it.

* * *

Maka's phone buzzes in her pocket as the last bell of school rings and the scraping of chairs against the floor fills the classroom. She pauses in joining the stampede of students clogging the doorway, fishing her phone out in time to see a message from her father flashing on the screen.

Stayed longer at the police department than planned :( I'll be bringing dinner home-anything you want?

It's a peace offering from the morning that she doesn't quite deserve; Spirit's words have the same awkward sincerity as he does when he broaches a delicate topic in person and she deliberates for a moment before replying.

Maka tucks her phone back in her pocket and brushes her hair out the way as she hauls her backpack over her shoulder-the pizza place on the corner of Hunter Street isn't her favorite but she knows Spirit has a soft spot for their pepperoni and anchovies special. She spends her walk to the bus turning over ideas on how to pick off the anchovies without Spirit noticing, but it's only when she's sitting in her spot in the back corner of the bus and receives no reply to the question she softly voiced aloud that she notices she is alone.

Not alone, a logical voice quickly corrects her. There is no cold gripping Maka's hand or any of the pain that comes along with Soul being too far away, but the fact doesn't do much to get rid of the anxious feeling gnawing at the pit of her stomach.

She leans against the window and blows out a breath, watching it fog up the glass. The silence bound around Soul reminds her of her own, but there is something else underneath that he seems determined to keep hidden. Maka traces a spiral onto the glass before wiping it clean-patience has never been something she has had much of, but she knows from personal experience that trying to wring answers out of someone determined to keep their silence is pointless and exasperating.

Taking out her calculus textbook, Maka begins to read the section for tomorrow's lesson and tamps down the thoughts pulling at her focus. Until Soul decides to speak, she can only be here and, as useless as it feels, it's better than giving up or erupting in frustration.

Soul reappears when the bus has reached its last stop and Maka is trudging behind the line of students trekking off the bus. A few students take their time in parting ways so she is unable to talk to him until they are out of Orcus Hollow and walking alongside the road splitting the forest in half.

Maka swings her umbrella back and forth, watching the angry swirling of rainclouds smeared across the sky. "Do you think it'll be raining on our way to Moricio?"

"Have we even come up with a way to get to Moricio?" Soul floats out in the middle of the lane, just out of reach, while Maka sticks to the side of the road. "At this rate, we're going to have to call Stein for a ride."

"That might be our best option at this point," she sighs. Her phone begins to ring then and she fishes it out of her pocket, on the verge of answering when she notices the unknown number.

Her footsteps slow and then come to a stop as she studies the number. She isn't well-versed in international area codes but the number is too long for a normal phone number. Next to her, Soul's voice drifts closer. "What is it?"

"My parents got me a phone when I turned eleven," Maka answers as she continues to look down at the screen. "I never changed my number when my mother left, in case she ever called."

Soul hovers in the corner of her vision. "Did she?"

Maka stares at the number for another moment before shoving the phone back in her pocket. "No."

She starts moving again, walking quickly until she feels a stitch beginning to form in her side. Next to her, Soul says nothing, but he stays close instead of moving away. It's the kind of comfort that still causes a lump in her throat to form and Maka concentrates her gaze on the ground until she feels it disappear.

"I understand why she left," Maka says suddenly after a few minutes. She can't look at Soul directly. "And I don't blame her for it, even though it hurt."

"But I did blame her for staying away." She fidgets with the umbrella handle, breathing out before she speaks again. "And I don't know how I can want her to stay gone and come back at the same time."

"With people you love, it's easy to see the best in them," Soul says. His gaze is vaguely distant, like he's been pulled in by a memory. "But it's just as easy to see the worst."

The faraway expression on his face vanishes and he shrugs. "It's their actions that help you decide which side to see, but what you do about it is your choice."

His words resonate somewhere in the jumbled mix of emotions that have been ebbing and flowing in her all day. She nods after a moment, glancing over at Soul. "And what did you choose?"

There's silence and Maka expects Soul to deflect or move away, but instead of doing either, he turns to look at her more fully. "I died before I had the chance to decide."

Maka looks back at the road. "That puts a damper on things."

"A bit."

For a couple of minutes, there is only the sound of Maka's footsteps and a soft hush as rain begins to fall again. Maka clears her throat as she opens her umbrella and rests it against her shoulder. "There's something else I wanted to say."

Soul doesn't answer but she can tell by the tilt of his head that he's listening.

Maka watches him out of the corner of her eye as she speaks. "If you don't want to talk about what's bothering you, I understand that," she says. Worry leaches into her words. "But if it's because of me or something I did-"

"It's not because of anything you did," Soul interrupts. "I-" He pauses in moving forward and trails off, jaw working as he thinks.

"There was a lot that I remembered after seeing Giriko," he starts. "I think going to wherever he tried sending us did something to me." He looks like he's going to say more but instead he shakes his head. "I don't know what it is exactly but it has nothing to do with you."

Maka fiddles with her umbrella as she processes Soul's answer. It had been a risk to say anything after this morning, and while his answer is not the truth, not completely, it's more than he's given her when she's asked about it in the past weeks.

"If that's what you say is wrong, I trust you," she says finally. "But I don't want you to think you're alone in this."

Soul is close enough that Maka could touch his face if he had a body. The smile tracing his lips is a strange mix of bittersweet. "Feeling alone hasn't been a problem," he says. The red of his eyes dims to a deep burgundy in the murky grey of the day. "But it still helps to hear, thank you."

Maka swallows the faint sense of disappointment as Soul pulls away and they resume walking. "Anytime."

* * *

The distinct smell of anchovies and pepperoni announces Spirit's arrival home before he does. Maka rises from her spot at the table and heads out to the front hallway before Spirit can call out, taking the pizza box and sniffing gingerly. "Got your favorite again, I see."

"Half of it is just pepperoni." There is a knowing expression on Spirit's face as he takes off the clown wig and nose. His clown make-up is already washed off, though the costume remains. "I'm not sure if that's a bigger disappointment for you or your cat."

"Technically, she is a stray cat." From his spot near the ceiling, Soul snorts as Maka places the box on the table and goes into the kitchen to get plates. "She just comes around for food sometimes."

Spirit takes his spot opposite from Maka and takes the plate she holds out to him. Tomato red hair from his wig still clings to his hair. "Sometimes being every other day, in this case."

"I haven't seen her for a while," she says as she sits and snags the slice of pizza that has the most pepperoni on it. "So your anchovies are safe."

Spirit hums in reply, turning his attention to his pizza, while Maka takes a sip of her drink, smile fading. Blair always came and went as she pleased throughout the years, which had never been a problem until a few weeks ago. Finding out that the stray cat she had semi-adopted could talk was one thing, but discovering there was more to the afterlife than just ghosts was another. However, Blair disappeared before Maka could get answers-after showing her and Soul his grave site a few days after Halloween, the cat had vanished the next day, leaving no trace of where she went.

She hides a sigh as she eats her pizza. Blair's exact connection to the afterlife is another riddle that she doesn't need, though it is Stein and the DWMA who are the chief mysteries that rule her life at the moment.

We have a lot to talk about. In the end, the only one who had really spoken was Maka and Soul; Stein had spent most of his time with his nose in his notebook as Marie drove, occasionally jotting down something as Maka recounted her experiences with the poltergeists while Azusa had typed notes on her phone when Soul shared his story. The teenager Marie called Kilik and the young boy and girl with him had eyed Maka from the back seat, speaking to each other in whispers, while Azusa, who hadn't lost her steely stare, never looked away from the empty seat where Soul was sitting.

It was only at the end of the drive, after Marie had pulled over on the road leading to Maka's house, that Stein had spoken.

"I told you," he had said to Azusa.

"Maybe," she had replied, finally glancing to Maka. "We still need to test her. And the ghost."

Marie had been the one to address Maka and the growing confusion in her expression. "I know you have questions," the clairvoyant had said, turning in her seat to face Maka. "But explanations like these take time and, with the way your father is going to react, it's probably best if you leave now and we wait till the storm blows over to explain everything."

She had pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Maka, who had looked at it to see an address along with a date and time written neatly on it. There had been a million questions buzzing in her mind but the one that made it out of her mouth was how Marie knew how Spirit would react.

"Benefits of having mild precognition," Marie had replied. "Now you'd better leave before he gets really upset."

Maka taps the side of her glass, frowning as she returns to the present. She had supposed that if Marie had been able to see her father's reaction, then she would have chosen the date Maka was ungrounded to meet, though her certainty on that has dwindled since the day has gone on.

"You look deep in thought." The sound of Spirit talking startles her and she looks up. "Eventful day at school?" There's an expression of slight concern on his face, mixed in with apprehension, which probably stems from their conversation this morning.

"Not really." She takes a bite of her pizza and swallows. "There was a test in history but it wasn't hard."

"You're going to have the pick of any college you want," Spirit says, pride tinging his voice. His eyes widen, as if he realizes what he's saying. "Just choose one that's not too far away."

"I'm not applying till next year," Maka reminds him. "Plus, it takes a lot more than good grades to get into college now."

Spirit reaches into the box for another slice of pizza. "Being at the top of your class since sixth grade has to count for something."

She shrugs. "I don't think colleges check grades that far back but we'll see what they think about my fighting record."

"Absolutely nothing since the principal expunged your records," Spirit says, jabbing at her with his pizza.

"He told me those were permanent," she says in confusion.

"Not when he was about to get his license taken away for going fifty in a residential area."

"That's sneaky," Maka says after a moment. "I like it."

"Thank you, but that still doesn't mean you're allowed to involve yourself in any kind of illegal activity." Spirit takes a swig of his drink.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

He laughs, and Maka asks, "Was the person you went to go out to identify from Orcus Hollow?"

"I don't think anyone is going to be able to do that." Spirit says, pushing away his pizza. "It looks like they were either burned or attacked with acid or both. Either way, there wasn't much left of them to identify."

He's careful in the way he phrases his answer, though Maka is more than aware of the plethora of ways death leaves its imprint on people. They lapse back into silence; Maka lingers at the table after she finishes her pizza, a change from the past days.

"Mom tried to call me." She pushes the words out of her mouth before she can second-guess herself. "I think it was her at least, I didn't answer so I don't know if it was actually her," she adds on in a rush. "But it looked like an international number and after what you said in the morning, I thought it was her and-"

Maka trails off abruptly, not sure of what else she wants to say.

Spirit is frozen, but when she looks at him, he blinks rapidly. "Did you want to talk to her?"

She answers with the truth. "I don't know."

"I was supposed to talk to you about her by today," Spirit says, talking more to himself than to Maka. "I didn't think she would call you so quickly but she never had much patience."

Somberness is an unnatural look on her father; it makes Maka feel she is seeing something she shouldn't. Before she can say anything, Spirit shakes his head, re-focusing. "Though she'll probably wait a while before calling again."

"And what if she calls when I still don't know if I want to talk to her or not?" she asks.

"I can call and tell her to wait for you to make the call." Spirit sounds more than nervous at the thought of talking to his ex-wife but his voice is determined. "She might not believe me at first but I'll make sure she listens."

Maka nods slowly. "Okay." She lets out a breath and the tension in her body eases. "Thank you."

"That's what I'm here for." He rises, picking up his plate and glass, before heading into the kitchen.

Maka follows suit and turns to Spirit as he begins to wash their glasses. "I'm going to finish my homework."

"Hang on." She's almost out of the kitchen when Spirit stops her. He twists to face Maka, wiping his hands dry and digging in his pocket for a moment. "Here."

She eyes the truck keys he holds out before looking up at him. "Really?"

"Really." He presses the keys into Maka's hand. "I figure it's been long enough."

Her fingers wrap around the keys. "Thank you." She hesitates for an instant before asking, "Is it alright if I go out for a bit?"

When she sees the look on Spirit's face, she adds, "It's only to Black Star's. I haven't hung out with him in a while." Guilt strikes instantly, but there is no way Spirit will let her drive an hour out to the city in the dark.

Spirit gives in with a sigh. "Fine, but you know curfew is-"

"Eleven," Maka finishes for him, rushing to the table to get her jacket and bag. She darts back into the kitchen to swoop Spirit in a brief hug, squeezing once before she lets go. "I'll be back by then, I promise."

"And you better pick up the phone if I call," he calls after her. "No voicemail!"

"I will!" Maka pulls open the door as she zips up her jacket. "Bye, papa!"

Soul is already waiting in the truck as she opens the door and slides into the driver's seat. "We have forty minutes to get to Moricio."

"I realize that," Maka says as she turns on the truck.

"And Moricio is an hour long drive."

"I also realize that." The truck's engine whines a bit from being driven after not being used for so long. "Which is why I might be committing a few traffic violations."

"And this is after your father forbade illegal activities."

"This is only semi-illegal," she says. The forest flits past them in a shadowy blur. "Everyone goes ten miles above the speed limit but it's only illegal if you get caught."

He rolls his eyes. "Airtight logic from the top of her class."

"Logic that will get us to the DWMA on time."

"What do you think they want?" Soul asks after a few minutes of silence. "I know you know as much as I do about the DWMA but I doubt we're going to get answers for nothing."

"Stein, Marie and Azusa visited me when I was eleven," Maka answers. "He believed me when I told him about seeing ghosts but I thought Marie and Azusa were fakes."

Soul laughs humorlessly. "The nails drilling into me from Azusa's stare during our van ride were definitely not fake."

"She looked at me the same way when we first met." The glare of the setting sun paints the sky a dull red, hitting Maka's face as she turns onto the road that leads to Moricio. "As for whatever they want, we both have to agree to it or it doesn't happen."

"Fair enough." Soul shifts, glancing out of the window. "Better commit a few more traffic violations if we want to make it though."

Maka grins at him. "Hold tight."

* * *

Although Moricio is only an hour away, the difference between the city and Orcus Hollow is staggering.

There is a vibrancy to Moricio that Orcus Hollow lacks, the result of over two hundred thousand people living in the same space. The heartbeat of the city pulses much faster than Orcus Hollow's-the city's skyline makes Moricio visible ten minutes before Maka drives past the city limits and, within the city, light and sound flows from everywhere as she negotiates the downtown area.

However, the address that Marie wrote down for her is tucked away in a pocket of murk and quiet in the city, a dilapidated storefront in the middle of a row of aged stores and warehouses that looks nothing like the headquarters for an organization like the DWMA.

Soul is the one to voice her concerns. "This looks like a dump, a trap, or both."

"They know we're coming, so it can't be a trap," she says, peering out of the window. There are rows of alleys and dark spaces for poltergeists to be hiding and a sliver of dread wedges itself in her stomach. "You can't sense anything out there?"

"No poltergeists," Soul confirms.

She breathes out a sigh of relief. "In that case, maybe we should go take a lo-"

A sharp gasp cuts off her words as someone knocks on her window.

Stein's glasses glint in the moonlight. His voice comes out muffled through the glass. "Welcome to the DWMA."


	4. Zemblanity

Noun; The opposite of serendipity, making unhappy, unlucky and unexpected discoveries occurring by design.

* * *

Stein is a scientist for the DWMA, not a clairvoyant like Azusa or Marie so Soul knows he can't see him, but the man certainly has an uncanny way of staring exactly where he sits in the truck. Next to him, Maka scowls at Stein. "Wasn't there any other way you could have announced yourself other than giving me a heart attack?"

"It doesn't suit my style," Stein replies. He makes a half-hearted flourish with his arm. "Are you going to stay in the car or are we going inside?"

Maka glances down at her watch. "We have three hours before I have to start driving home."

"Duly noted," Stein says, stepping to the side as Maka opens the door.

Music from a couple blocks over thuds in the distance as Stein leads them to the storefront Maka parked in front of, which is locked tight with a steel padlock. Instead of stopping to unlock the door, Stein continues to walk forward, passing straight through the door.

Maka stops dead in her tracks. "How did he do that?"

"One of our psychics creates very good illusions," Stein calls from behind the not-door. "She works in human resources so it's always a struggle to find her office when someone wants to file a complaint."

Slowly, Maka climbs up the store's steps and stops just before the door, eyeing it carefully before glancing at Soul.

He shrugs. "You know I'd go through either way."

"Right." She looks back to the door, tenses and sucks in a breath right as she shoots forward, plunging through the door.

Soul follows and nearly collides into Maka as she comes to an abrupt halt. He veers wildly to the left and opens his eyes to find himself in the middle of a wall. Shaking his head, Soul floats back into the room to see Maka still standing in the same place.

He drifts over to her. "What are you looking at?" When she doesn't answer, he follows her gaze and feels his own eyes widen.

"Aura mirrors," Stein says, coming to a stop beside the two. He regards his indigo, faceless reflection in the giant mirror that lines the room, which resembles a hotel lobby. "It's not very specific but it's useful as a preliminary test for psychic abilities."

Maka lifts a hand and the green, vaguely human-shaped blob in the mirror raises its arm as well. While Stein's aura is a uniform shade of indigo, a black-green diamond lies in the center of Maka's, the rest of it a mix of greens that range from the deepest emerald to a soft spring green.

"Why are there cracks in the middle?" Maka steps closer to the mirror, finger tracing the small, rootlike cracks that spread across the diamond in her aura.

"I have no idea," Stein says. "I've seen it before so it's either a good thing or a bad thing."

She raises an eyebrow. "That tells me nothing."

"Science is like that, on occasion." He shrugs. "Truthfully, it's up to you. It's your aura."

His gaze moves to Soul's aura, curiosity stirring in his eyes. "Though an aura like that isn't something I've seen before."

His aura is shaped nothing like a person. The black thorns weaving themselves through his aura resemble a web, bleeding darkness. Where his aura isn't covered in black, it burns a dull blue, fading down to near grey.

An invisible weight grows in Soul's chest the longer he looks at the thorns. There's nowhere to hide from Stein and Maka's stares so he deflects instead. "And how can you even see my aura if you can't see me?"

He waits for Stein's reply but it doesn't come. Maka coughs awkwardly, shifting her weight from one foot to another before speaking to Stein. "Soul wants to know how you can see his aura but not him."

"Soul perception." Stein's eyes move from the mirror to nearly exactly where Soul hovers. "Just a heightened sense of perception, really. It's not worth being classified as a psychic ability when anyone can train themselves to do it, but the DWMA insists."

A sharp ringing coming from the tattered lab coat Stein wears halts the conversation. From a pocket inside the coat, Stein extracts a phone that looks more like a small brick. He flips open the phone. "Excuse me."

Soul drifts closer to Maka, ignoring the growing whispers inside of him as he does. "What do you think?"

"There's not much to tell." Maka's gaze slides over to where Stein paces as he talks to whoever is on the other end of the line. "He's still as eccentric as he was five years ago."

He turns his laugh into a dry snort. "Do you think he's telling the truth about not seeing me?"

"Yes," Maka says immediately, though she frowns at her own answer. "I don't know, there was something about his aura. I don't think he can see you, no matter how hard he tried."

"You're right in that."

For the second time that night, Stein makes them jump without looking even vaguely sorry about it. "People with psychic abilities don't usually have human-shaped auras."

Maka's frown deepens. "Why?"

"Your abilities pull outwards into the world, into the supernatural," Stein answers, gesturing to Maka's aura. "Naturally, it affects your aura. The stronger your ability, the more your aura pulls to Abeyance and the afterlife."

"To where ?"

"We'll get into that once everyone is present." He gestures to a door Soul hadn't noticed in the corner of the room. "Shall we?"

Soul's eyes trail back to his reflection. In life, he had never shown any sign of psychic abilities and death wasn't enough to rend his aura into the ruin it is. He can't stop his gaze from flicking to Maka or embracing the warmth that flows into his hand from her end of their connection. Even with the whispers crawling down his ears, their connection soothes the nerves brought to life by his aura. With a slight nod to her, he follows Stein.

He stays behind Maka as they follow Stein to the door. It takes Soul a moment to adjust to the darkness stretching out in front of him to make out the hallway; its walls are painted ebony and the floors are a checkered pattern of black and white tiles. Lights spaced too far apart make the hallway appear much longer than the length of the building.

"Why is it so dark?" Maka stays at the mouth of the door as Stein strides forward.

"Ghosts and poltergeists are attracted to people with psychic abilities, their aura draws them in." Stein's voice echoes oddly in the hallway, like he's on the opposite end of a football field rather than ten feet away. "The DWMA uses darkness to hide auras, especially one like yours."

She still doesn't move. "Poltergeists like the darkness."

"Not when it's cast by an exorcist."

The doubtful expression on Maka's face remains.

"I'll go first." Soul doesn't miss the way Maka watches as he edges around her to be between her and the hallway. "It'll be like last time, except you can leave your eyes open."

She cracks a small smile at that. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or not."

"You get to see me." He means to be light and teasing but the way Maka's expression changes makes Soul feel like blushing, if that were possible.

It disappears before he can make any sense of it. Maka takes a step forward, hooking her her hair behind her ear. "Your hair is a bit like a Christmas light so it might help," she says, a wry smile playing on her lips. "All of it is white now."

"It's more of a silver."

"White with a silvery tint," she corrects as she moves forward another step.

"Same difference."

She laughs once. "I'll take that as your way of saying I'm right."

Soul rolls his eyes. "And I'll let you believe that."

She laughs again, the sound echoing slightly as it fades and quiet falls between them. There's only the sound of the gentle rhythm of Maka's breathing as they walk down the hallway, moving in sync. The silence between them is almost comfortable, and despite the constant niggling of the whispers, it's the most peace Soul has felt since Halloween.

"It feels like years ago." It's hard to make Maka out, little more than an outline in the dark. "The poltergeists." Her pace quickens slightly, enough she's close enough to see the green of her eyes peeking out in the darkness. There's an eager hopefulness in them. "Maybe Stein or Marie can tell us why you were able to talk with them."

The whispers curl in Soul's throat and climb down into his chest. He lets his hand drop and he shifts away so her eyes disappear into the dark again. "Maybe."

It turns quiet again but the tranquility in the air is gone. Soul's hands twitch, as if he could rip out the murmurs inside of him. While his subconscious has other ideas when he daydreams, Soul doesn't choose to remember the night he led Maka down an alleyway full of poltergeists often. Finding he could not only understand the garbled language of the decomposing shadows, but speak it too, was enough to rattle the demons inside his head, and he'd used it as the reason for his odd behavior when Maka had found him out on the roof later that night.

But there had been something else he'd discovered that night, a feeling, a thought . It had lasted only an instant but it had etched itself so thoroughly into his mind that Soul wonders how he had ever managed to convince himself that it was something else.

Feed.

Looking back on it, the whispers hadn't been nearly as strong as they are now, the barest echo of a suggestion. But back then, it had been a searing flash against his soul, the feeling so ridiculous ( so impossible, he remembered thinking) that he tricked himself into believing he never could have felt it at all.

"That's when your eye color started turning," Maka says abruptly. She moves closer and her eyes trace over his. "I remember thinking they looked different."

"No." The word comes out more sharply than he means it to and he winces at how it echoes. He clears his throat. "They didn't start changing till a while after that, from what I remember."

There's a slight pause before Maka answers. "Well, you'd remember that best," she says with an artificial lightness. Several beats of silence fall in between them before she speaks again. "I think it's kind of fitting."

He frowns. "You mean my eyes?"

"Yeah." Maka is close enough that he can make out the little shrug she gives. "The hair too. They suit someone named Soul."

A snort escapes him, despite himself. "Solomon, technically."

"Can I start calling you that?"

"Absolutely not."

Her reply is cut off by an overwhelming brightness that emerges out of nowhere. Soul blinks against it on instinct, squinting until he adjusts to the sharp sting of the light. They've stepped into the middle of a giant desert with a bright blue sky overhead, though further inspection shows they're actually in a giant room even as the fluffy clouds drift across the sky. Beyond them is a field of crosses, haphazardly placed, with some bent at weird angles.

"They're not poltergeists." It takes Soul a moment to place Stein, standing on top of a mound of sand. He follows Stein's gaze down to his feet where several large and strangely cat-like shadows sniff and paw at him and Maka. One of them stops in front of Soul and peers up at him, glittering onyx eyes the only feature on its face.

"What are they then?" Maka looks down uneasily, shifting her feet away from where one of the creatures attempts to swipe at her shoelace.

"Demon sniffers." Stein watches the creature staring up at Soul, who ignores the rest of its companions as they disappear off into shadows rippling on the walls. "It does exactly what its name says, though it can distinguish between poltergeists and...other things."

Flinching, Soul moves away but the sniffer's gaze follows him. There is something keen and knowing in its eyes and it fills him with a growing discomfort.

"Do you always take so many precautions for a pair of teenagers?" she asks.

"While we have caught a few supernatural infiltrators over the past few decades, it's more of what could be following you that we're worried about." Stein pushes up his glasses and moves his eyes away from the sniffer eyeing Soul. It seems to act like a signal because the sniffer suddenly rises and disappears into the shadows with the rest of its companions.

"And this place?" Maka scrambles up the hill to join Stein, Soul close on her heels for once as the lingering stare of the sniffer pricks at him from the walls.

"The headquarters of the DWMA." Sand gives way to grey as Stein leads them onto a stone pathway.

The same curiosity that stirs to life in Maka's eyes when she comes across an interesting new fact is present now. "Where is that exactly?"

"Nowhere, therefore it's everywhere," he replies with a halfhearted flourish of his hand. "Think of it as Schrodinger's Law come to life."

"There is someone else better who can answer how," Stein says as Maka opens her mouth again. "Though he'll be joining us later."

"This reminds me of one of those episodes from that show you watch with your dad," Soul mutters, even though Stein has no way of hearing him. "The Midnight Zone."

Maka coughs back a laugh. "You mean the Twilight Zone?"

"Same difference."

"There will be very little in the way of the Twilight Zone that you'll be seeing tonight," Stein says from ahead of them. As he speaks, they round an invisible bend in the room, which seems to stretch on forever. Red arches built like guillotines complete with blades hanging precariously lead to the end of the stone path; it opens up to a slab of obsidian, where two figures sitting at the table resting neatly in the middle of the slab wait.

"Hello." Marie greets them as Stein settles in the seat next to her, Azusa calmly sipping from a cup of steaming tea on her other side. Unlike Marie, there is no smile on her face as her gaze moves to Soul.

Marie holds up a silver teapot, smile faltering slightly when her eyes turn to Soul. "Tea?" she asks, already beginning to pour it without waiting for Maka's answer.

To Stein, she says, "You took your time."

"You said not to rush them through the hallway," Stein answers mildly, withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from a pocket inside his lab coat. Instead of lighting it, he places it behind his ear. "Trying to break the habit," he says at the look on Maka's face. "I can have one if the world is ending."

"Which won't happen, if we do our jobs right," Marie says, pouring tea into a cup she produced out of nowhere. She slides the cup towards Maka and rests her hands on the table, intertwining her fingers. "We have a lot to talk about and a limited amount of time to do it in."

Maka frowns. "We got here right at seven."

"Getting to the Death Room takes longer than it looks." Azusa speaks for the first time since they arrived, setting down her cup. There's something eerily reminiscent of the sniffer in her stare's steeliness, which still hasn't moved from Soul. "It's nearly half past eight."

"That's-" Maka breaks off as she looks down at her watch. Her brow furrows. "How?"

"It goes back to the founding of the DWMA." Although Azusa is the more unsettling out of the two, there is an empyrean lilt to Marie's voice that is more disquieting than comforting to Soul. Her eyes, which appeared a warm golden-brown when he first met Marie, have an odd glow to them, like dying embers.

Meanwhile, Maka's patience has dried up. "And what is the DWMA?"

Marie looks to Azusa, who gives a slight nod of her head, before continuing. "Two hundred years ago, the Debunking Wraiths and Mysteries Analysts was established by a group of people with psychic abilities to serve as a front for our real purpose. While there are organizations similar to ours all over the world and we keep connected, we're the only agency on this continent." She pauses. "Well, officially, at least."

Marie turns to Stein, who hands her a manila folder Soul hadn't noticed before."There are two goals of the DWMA," she says as she opens the folder and spreads a series of photographs across the table. "Part of the first is documenting areas and hotspots of supernatural activity."

Soul and Maka lean forward in unison. The photograph closest to Soul is of an elderly woman sitting on a couch, who appears completely normal except for the fact that he can see the couch print through her. He moves his eyes to the other photographs and feels Maka recoil as she does the same, the rotting faceless shadows of the poltergeists stark against the faded background. They're no less disturbing in the photo than in person, somehow leering up at Soul even without eyes.

He represses a shudder and moves to the last photograph and feels an even bigger wave of revulsion sweep through him. The person standing in front of the aura mirror in the photograph has a strangely blank expression on their face, but it's their reflection that really draws his attention.

Their aura is nothing but a twisted spiral of black, cracks of bone white through it. There is a dark heaviness wafting from the photograph, and Soul looks away while Maka pulls the photo closer to her. "What is this?"

"Someone possessed by a demon, who somehow made it past the front door," says Stein. He looks vaguely reminiscent, rather than discomfited by the picture. "It was a rather eventful Tuesday."

Marie takes back the photo and tucks it back into the folder. "Eventful isn't how I'd describe nearly being cursed with damned souls for eternity."

"Which is why I said rather eventful."

Marie looks back to Soul and Maka. "While we do identify and record supernatural activity, the other things we do run along those lines of-" Her eyes dart to Soul and back and she clears her throats nervously. "While it might not be the most pleasant thing to hear for some of those pres-"

"We reap the souls of those who don't belong here and send them to the afterlife," Azusa interrupts. She finally turns away from Soul to look at Maka, although her eyes briefly flick back towards him. "And exorcise the ones who are not human."

In his ears, the whispers swell.

"Neither of which is the case here," Marie says quickly in response to the way Maka tenses, though her tone is uncertain. "Souls bonded to living souls are unique."

Maka blinks, straightening and glancing at Soul. "Is that why we can't be apart from each other?"

"Not exactly." A frown forms on Marie's lip and she glances at Azusa. "Is it?"

Azusa doesn't respond immediately, but instead looks between Soul and Maka, as if she can see the bond between them. Everything about her appearance is made up of sharp angles and edges, Soul notices, as she pushes up her glasses with nails that are too pointed to be normal.

"It's not something that has ever been observed in our reapers," Azusa answers slowly after a moment. The iron in her gaze is replaced by an inscrutable impassiveness. "But it's not outside the realm of possibility."

"So your reapers are ghost hunters?" Maka asks. She sweeps a look between Azusa and Marie. "You're both reapers?"

"While Azusa and I work closely with the reapers, we cannot reap souls like they do, a bond with a ghost is needed for that," Marie says. "The ghost needs the right kind of soul as well." She taps the side of her cup restlessly. "Azusa can banish poltergeists, however."

"Banishment requires destroying the soul along with the body, however." Azusa's words are matter-of-fact, but a hint of distaste crosses her face. "No chance of afterlife or anything else."

"Which is why it's only used as a last resort," Marie interjects in a falsely smooth voice. "Mostly, we help ghosts stuck on Earth move on, but in the cases of poltergeists, Azusa ensures the area is clear after the reapers and I purify the area."

Soul shifts away from the subtle peeks Marie keeps giving him as Maka digests this information in the same way she analyzes a difficult math problem: furrowed brow and nose scrunched as she thinks before she finally gives a slow nod. "What is the difference between a ghost and a poltergeist?" she asks.

"Ghosts are souls that died and remained on Earth," answers Azusa, leaning forward to tap the picture of the ghost on the couch. "Generally, they retain their appearance as it was when they died. Over time, they can lose sense of their identity and become malevolent but, since they cannot interact with the world, they are no danger to the living."

"If you're not able to see them, at least." Maka's eyes trail to the photographs with the poltergeists; her body is stiff and angled away from them, as if she's trying to be as far as possible from them. "So what's a poltergeist?"

"A dead person who was trapped in Abeyance and then crossed back into Earth."

Maka looks up from the pictures. "You said that word before," she says, addressing Stein. "What is it?"

Instead of answering her, Stein takes the photograph of the demon, studying it as if it could speak to him. "The cat familiar you mentioned, Blair," he says. "Did she give any details about the day the witches disappeared?"

"She only said that one morning she woke up and they were all gone," Maka answers. Her eyes flick up from the paper. "So, she was telling the truth about the witches?" She glances at Soul. "About gathering souls?"

"Accounts throughout history are heavily disjointed and the witches disappeared thousands of years ago, so it's impossible to say what the truth was," Stein says. There is a glare from the Death Room's harsh light that reflects off his glasses, making his eyes impossible to see. "However, what the familiar told you fits in with the narrative we've pieced together."

Soul exchanges a look with Maka-they'd debated how much stock they could put into the cat's words after she disappeared without notice. Maka looks back at the scientist. "And that is?"

"Witches were the apex predators before humans, but they vanished so long ago that the only memories the human race has of them have been garbled by superstition and time," Stein replies. "How their particular diet and abilities evolved remains a mystery, but the existence of poltergeists and accounts from the more rational poltergeists proves witches continue to survive, albeit in another dimension."

He places the demon's photograph facedown and withdraws a pen from his lab coat, drawing a line down the middle and pointing to the right side of the photo. "If we say that this side is life and the other side is the afterlife or whatever comes after, then the line is-"

"Death," Maka finishes for him.

"Which is a one-way trip, generally speaking," Stein says, drawing an arrow across the page. "If a person dies and is unable to move on, they become a ghost but they never cross into the afterlife. Unnatural, but there are glitches in any system, especially in one as vast as life and death."

"And here I thought I was just unusually lucky," mutters Soul to Maka, who has to stifle her smile.

Stein draws a series of dotted lines in front of the solid line. "Something happened the day the witches disappeared, although we have no idea what. It moved them into the space between life and death." He taps the narrow sliver of space between the two lines. "That is what Abeyance is."

"How is that possible?" Maka studies the paper. "If life and the afterlife are next to each other?"

"We've barely scratched the surface on interdimensional physics, let alone the physics of death," Stein says, shrugging. "And I've never died so I couldn't tell you how long a journey death is."

Soul is acutely aware of the three pairs of eyes on him. He speaks quickly, before he can be questioned. "All I remember is the pain disappearing."

Maka cringes, though both Marie and Azusa's expressions don't change.

"No," Azusa says to Stein, who Soul belatedly realizes didn't hear their exchange.

Stein resumes as if nothing happened. "When the witches left, they also created what we call the rift, though those with a flair for purple prose have called it the veil between worlds in recent decades," he says dryly. He slides his finger down the dotted line, to the gaps between the lines. "It's not entirely inaccurate, considering the rift can become worn down with supernatural activity like rips in a veil. From we've observed, witches can't cross it but other things can."

"Is that what that place in the swamp was?" Maka asks with a sidelong glance to Soul. "A rip in the rift?"

"It wasn't quite a rip, but an area where the rift had been thinned," Azusa answers. "Giriko lived on its boundary, which is why he was able to remain hidden except when he went out to gather souls. Gathering souls takes a large amount of energy, which is likely why he chose Halloween as his day to lure people to him."

Maka's eyebrows knit together like when she immediately spots a problem in someone's argument. She says nothing, but the concentrated look doesn't leave her face as Stein continues.

"Most souls move through the rift without a problem." He draws arrows that stop in the space between the two lines. "But there are some that become trapped. Or are purposely sent to Abeyance from this world." His gaze flickers towards Soul as he adds more arrows, though these bounce back from the rift and into the living side of the paper. "Sometimes, they cross back across the rift and return to Earth."

"So that's what makes them a poltergeist," Maka says, straightening up. "Coming back."

"Yes." Marie's fingers begin to thrum against her cup again. "Souls were never meant to cross back and forth from life and death," she says. "It takes some time after they return to Earth but, sooner or later, the soul begins to decay."

Maka stiffens. "Decay?"

Marie hesitates before answering, sliding a pointed look towards Azusa. "It's only a theory but we think returning to Earth creates a weight on the soul they cannot bear. The soul starts to deteriorate and break apart. The effects vary from soul to soul, but the end result is always the same."

Soul pretends not to notice the uneasy glance Maka gives him. "And what is that?"

"Certain things begin to...change." Marie's words have a careful nervousness about them. "Their appearance begins to warp as well as other things."

"That doesn't answer my question." Soul recognizes the short and muted way Maka bites off her words as the tone she adopts when she's trying and failing to hide her impatience. "What other things?"

A highly discomfited look replaces the nervous expression on Marie's face. "Eventually, their soul decays to the point where it can no longer stay intact and they transform into this." She gestures to a picture of a poltergeist, who is only a mangled twist of rotted flesh and darkness. "After that, it's not long till their soul disintegrates entirely." A shadow crosses her face, eyes briefly clouded with memories before she gives her head a shake. "We have yet to determine when a poltergeist is too far gone to save their soul, which is why we reap poltergeists as soon as we find them."

"You're the first person to bond with a ghost from Abeyance but bonds such as yours give stability, which is why we believe that the poltergeist conversion won't happen to Soul." Azusa nods to Soul before he or Maka can speak. "In addition to reaping ghosts and poltergeists, we monitor tears in the rift and mend them in order to minimize the number of souls that cross back and keep the witches from returning."

Soul's mind is oddly clear as everything sinks in. Marie's words are almost relieving in a way-it's the explanation to the hell inside his head, even if the answer is that he's not meant to exist.

Meanwhile, Maka's hands clench tightly. "If it's your job to guard the rift, then why didn't the DWMA catch Giriko a long time ago? Don't you know how many people he's killed?"

"The DWMA has only ever had a thousand psychics working within the organization, at maximum," Azusa replies coolly. "Of those, less than a quarter were reapers. Currently, the DWMA only has around eighty reapers in service." She shifts forward, interlocking her fingers. "It may be blunt but to assign a reaper an area of no significance would be a poor use of our resources."

"There are places all over the continent where the rift is worn like the one in Orcus Hollow," Marie adds as Maka opens her mouth. "It's not that we don't want to monitor every area where the rift can open up, but our numbers are barely enough to guard the active rips in the rift."

Soul watches as Maka's irritation battles with the logic of Marie and Azusa's statements. She settles for crossing her arms with a slight huff and changing the subject. "So what made us significant?" She gestures to herself and Soul. "What do you want with us?"

"Originally, nothing," Azusa says. "We knew that you could see ghosts the moment we met you five years ago. Your bond with the family of ghosts was surprisingly stable for someone so young, but it didn't appear that your abilities extended to much else."

The tension in Maka's shoulders goes lax. "Bond?"

"I'm sure you felt it," Azusa says, raising an eyebrow. "The way that they seemed to appear right when you needed someone the most?"

An odd dazed feeling blooms in Soul's mind, and the thought that he's not as okay with Marie's news as he believed crosses his mind as he turns to look at Maka when she doesn't answer. The feeling dissipates slightly when he sees the way Maka has frozen, eyes turned glassy with memory.

Then she blinks and the fog in her eyes disappears. "They protected me from poltergeists when I was little," she says in the rapid mutter that accompanies recalling painful times. "After that, they were always with me." Her fingers are digging tightly into her jacket sleeves and her gaze is focused on the table. "They protected me from a demon, I think. And then they were gone."

She looks up, shifting restlessly in her chair before she speaks. "Do you know what happened to them?"

A heavy silence follows. Azusa is finally the one to answer, leaning forward and setting her hands on the table. "Come with me." She rises but, instead of walking off onto the stone path, she strides towards the fields of crooked crosses.

"Go on," Marie says at Maka's hesitation. "We'll wait here."

Maka stands up, looking at Soul, before following Azusa.

They trail behind in silence. A thousand thoughts bounce and rattle around in Soul's head, each one of them too loud for his mind; the only good thing about them is the way they drown out the whispers, although he knows they will still be there when the buzz of his thoughts fades.

That he is not meant to be here is the thought that latches onto Soul, intensifying when he peeks at Maka from the corner of his eye. His appearance has already begun to warp (he continues to draw his mind in circles around the cesspit that are his whispers) and he has no idea whether their bond will halt the other effects of crossing back. What will it do to her to be bonded to something that shouldn't exist?

"Is this anything you were expecting?" Maka's voice breaks him away from the growing eddy of his thoughts.

His laugh is humorless. "Not in the slightest."

She nods-the look in her eyes says she is still somewhere else. "Sounds about right."

They reach the edge of the fields then. Azusa links her hands behind her back and inclines her head towards Maka. Up close, Soul can see her eyes aren't the dark grey that he thought they were, but a dark blue instead.

"When the DWMA was established, one of the founders with a particularly powerful ability for automatic writing created this field of crosses to keep track of the souls that passed onto the afterlife." At Maka's confused face, she says. "Automatic writing is done without a pencil or person. We use it to record the names of those who move onto the afterlife on this continent."

The clairvoyant looks back to the field and watches as one of the shadows on the ground separates and approaches her, the shape of the sniffer coming into being and solidifying as it gets closer. "My demon sniffers mainly detect malevolent spirits and poltergeists after a reaping, but we keep them in the Death Room because they are exceptionally good finders in general."

There is a pause from Maka as she weighs Azusa's words-faint shadows underneath her eyes that Soul hadn't noticed make themselves apparent in the bright light of the Death Room. "So that means they're able to find names?" she asks finally.

A smile ghosts Azusa's lips. "If they're here, yes."

The sniffer pads over to sit in front of Maka, who looks uncertainly at Azusa before kneeling down to be face-to-face with the sniffer. The creature's ears prick up as Maka lists a series of names that Soul has heard her occasionally mutter in her sleep.

It doesn't move after Maka finishes, ears continuing to twitch. Then, it rises up and bounds away soundlessly, fading into the distance in a matter of seconds.

"Is that good?" Maka asks as she stands, brushing the dirt from her knees.

"It's something," Azusa replies. "Wait and see."

Soul moves to be next to Maka; there is a brittle tension twisted in her shoulders, the kind that stems from holding onto an old pain. She says nothing as they wait, fingers fidgeting anxiously at her sides.

It takes several minutes for the sniffer to return, holding a cross in its mouth as it lopes into view, trailed by five other sniffers also carrying crosses. Fluidly, it deposits the cross at Maka's feet and trots over to Azusa as its companions do the same, wagging its tail once and disappearing back into the field at the nod she gives it.

Maka bends down and picks up the crosses one by one. They're made out of strange, jet black metal that clinks together and echoes resonantly as Maka gathers them up. She doesn't appear to be breathing as she stares down at the names etched on the crosses.

Soul waits for another moment before peering over her shoulder. "Is it them?"

Maka breathes out finally and a tiny sigh escapes with it. She pulls the crosses close to her. "Yes, it is."

She turns to Azusa. Her voice wobbles slightly as she speaks. "I had thought the demon destroyed them when I was younger."

"Demons can turn a soul rotten. Consume it, even," Azusa says. Her words send a wave of nausea through Soul. "But complete destruction is outside of a demon's powers."

Azusa steps closer. "The demon that attacked you then was the same one that you defeated a few weeks ago," she says. Her gaze slides to Soul. "How did that happen?" There is no question in her voice as she asks, tilting her head to one side.

Reality takes on a bizarre and intense surrealness as he tries to focus. "I'm not sure what happened exactly," he starts, attempting to gather his thoughts. "We were cornered and then-" Soul breaks off. There was a certain kind of exhilaration bordering too closely on hunger when he possessed Maka that he doesn't care to let his mind linger on. "It was like we merged minds," he mumbles quickly. "When we touched the demon, we became unconscious. The demon was gone when we woke up."

"Possession," Azusa says, and he reluctantly nods. "Dangerous when it's direct like that," she says.

"Neither of us knew we could do that," he says defensively.

"Possession puts a strain on the bond between you two, but it isn't inherently bad." Blue or not, Azusa's gaze pierces him like a knife. "It was the thing that saved you, in this case. And it confirms what I've believed since I saw you come out of that forest."

Maka frowns. "And what does it mean?"

"It means many things," a quiet voice answers.

Soul and Maka turn in unison-it is hard to see the face of the person approaching them due to the hood of their cloak, except for their eyes, which burn a brilliant shade of gold. They come to a stop about ten feet away from the three, their cloak billowing out in front of them as they lower their hood. "Constant sleep deprivation since poltergeists have no regard for sleep schedules, for one."

The young man pulls off the black gloves from his hands and stows them in his cloak in one fluid movement. His skin is so translucent that Soul can make out the veins in his hands. "A shortened lifespan, most likely."

The bone white streaks running through one side of his hair matches the tiny skull pinned at his neck, catching the light as he draws closer, gaze moving between Soul and Maka. There is something ancient about his eyes that doesn't fit with the rest of his appearance. "But the main thing it means is that you're a reaper."


	5. Kairos

Noun; a moment opportune for action, words, or movement.

* * *

For several moments, there is nothing but a taut silence as Maka and Soul study the stranger and he examines them. The rigidly formal style of his outfit surprises Maka: for someone who claims to be a reaper; his black suit and the prim and proper manner in which he holds himself is more fitting for the elderly mortician that was in charge of her grandma's funeral than someone who can't be more than a few years older than her. But what stands out the most is the distinct lack of ghosts around him-there is no ghostly body next to or above him.

Azusa is the one to break the silence. "Kid is one of our newer reapers," she says to the two before looking at Kid. "Maka and Soul are the pair that I mentioned to you a few days ago."

"You didn't say they'd be coming in tonight, I thought these were a different pair." An impressed expression crosses Kid's face as he looks from Maka to Soul. "Defeating a demon is nearly impossible for anyone but a fully trained reaper."

"Well, we did almost die," interjects Soul. "Or again, in my case."

Maka nods in agreement with him reluctantly. "We didn't have much of an idea of what we were doing," she mumbles.

A small smile tugs on the corner of Kid's mouth. "The feeling doesn't go away. Nor does the death risk, I'm afraid."

"Kid is one of our youngest reapers," says Azusa. "He joined the DWMA about four years ago."

"It was more like I barrelled into the DWMA," Kid corrects. "I remember there was a dent on the door that came from trying to keep us out."

An actual smile traces Azusa's lips. "The circumstances were confusing and unusual."

Kid mirrors Azusa's smile. "Extremely so."

"Where is the ghost you bonded with?" Maka asks, unable to keep her curiosity silent any longer.

"The long and short story is a witch's curse," Kid says. He looks behind himself. "And I thought they had come out by now, but the lack of voices should have told me otherwise."

He reaches into his cloak and pulls out a pair of pistols. They are distinctly from another era, entirely made of silver, and with curling flourishes etched on their sides. "Come out."

At Kid's words come dual blinding flashes of light and two figures emerge from the guns. As the light fades, a grumpy voice says, "I was taking a nap. Or as close as I could get to it."

"You've been napping for the last six hours, Liz," Kid replies patiently, looking up at the taller of the two ghosts. With their backs to her, there's not much Maka can tell about the ghosts, except that they're accompanied by a faint scent of smoke. "We'll be going home soon but there are some people I think you'll be interested in meeting first."

Liz sniffs but the shorter ghost turns at Kid's words, letting out a delighted gasp when she spots Maka and Soul. "Another one!"

A pang sweeps through Maka as she gazes at the ghost. Her face still has traces of roundness from childhood and she vibrates with the energy of an excitable child as she zooms closer to Maka, the spray of freckles across her cheeks and nose evident even with her translucence. "How old are you?"

Maka leans back awkwardly as the ghost eagerly pushes her face close to hers. Up close, the uneven ends of the girl's bob cut are apparent, like the hand of whoever cut her hair was shaking as they did it. "Sixteen," she answers. "How old are you ?"

"Fourteen," replies the girl, twisting back to look at Liz. "She's your age, sis!"

"So I heard." Liz rolls her eyes, though there is semi-amused affection in her words. Other than being taller than her sister, Liz's hair is a darker blonde and doesn't have Patti's uneven ends, her face more angled than her sister's as she raises an eyebrow. "I do have ears, Patti."

Patti turns back to Maka. "All of the other reapers are old geezers." She plays with the zipper of her jacket as she speaks, which is noticeably fraying and scorched in some areas. "They never want to do anything but reap souls and talk about death," she says, jutting out her bottom lip. "They're no fun at all."

Maka rips her gaze from a particularly singed patch in her jacket and pretends not to choke on the smell of smoke, which intensifies with Patti's proximity. She meets Patti's eyes. "That's unfortunate?" she offers.

The ghost shrugs. "They're easier targets for pranking."

Kid frowns. "I thought we talked about that."

"We did." Patti's attention flickers over to Soul, who appears to have been caught in a silent staring contest with Liz. She floats over to him and gives him a onceover. "You're the strangest-looking ghost I've ever met."

Soul grins a little too widely for a smile. "That's because I'm actually a vampire."

Patti's eyes grow wide with fascination rather than fear at the sight of Soul's teeth, however. "Cool!"

"How old is your bond?" asks Maka. She looks from Patti to Liz-other than their burned clothes, the smell of smoke, and their transparency, there is no other change about their appearance that is as radical as Soul's. "How long have you been dead?"

"We've been dead for nine years." Liz moves forward to be next to Patti. There is a veiled protective wariness in her posture that grows as she looks towards Maka and Soul. "Kid found us five years ago."

"We bonded shortly before joining the DWMA," says Kid. He spares a glance at Liz and Patti. "It took some time to build up that kind of trust."

Liz snorts. "Several near-death experiences, you mean."

"Does it take dying to form a bond with a ghost?" Maka asks. "Is that why there aren't many reapers?"

"Dying does make it easier to bond with a ghost but it's not required," Kid answers, shaking his head. "And while clairvoyants can bond with ghosts, it takes being born with a certain kind of soul to be a reaper."

He pauses, as if waiting for Maka to follow up with another question, and she hesitates, grip tightening around the crosses in her arms as she parses through the dozens of questions running through her mind. It's funny on a vague and distant level, that she can take news of the fate of her ghost family and reaper abilities in stride, but a phone call from her mother sends her mind backsliding into a pit of static and repressed emotions.

"So why are you here to meet us?" she finally asks. "You said you were expecting us."

Kid glances at Azusa, who nods, before he answers. "Whenever someone with the capability to become a reaper is found, a position is always offered to them in the DWMA," he says. "The risks involved are clear so a reaper like myself always comes in to give a demonstration so you know-"

"You want me to work for the DWMA?" she interrupts.

"It's your decision," Kid says, looking from her to Soul. "Both of yours."

"I'm in school," Maka says. She sounds ridiculous, even to her own ears, but her brain isn't working properly at the moment. "I have a curfew."

Kid looks slightly flummoxed but he still answers. "It wouldn't be a full-time job," he says. "Usually, I'm done some time before dawn."

"Why don't we go back to Marie and Stein?" Azusa suggests. "It'll be easier to discuss matters there."

"We'll take the new ghost under our wing," Liz says suddenly. She and Patti move to be on either side of Soul. "It's better for him to hear the ghost's side of things, anyways."

Maka looks at Soul questioningly, and he gives a little shrug. Knowing him, it's more of a sign that he's detached himself from what's happening than an answer, but it's impossible to say anything now, so she shrugs as well. "All right."

The ghosts disappear without another word. When Maka makes to move, Azusa steps in her way. "They cannot go with you," she says gently, looking down at the crosses in Maka's arms. At her feet appear the sniffers from earlier. "But you will be able to visit the field when you return to the Death Room."

Maka looks down at the crosses, fingers running over Mrs. Horschenblott's name. Her first name was Amelia-it hadn't been something Maka ever thought to ask when the ghost had still been around.

Blowing out a breath, she nods and crouches down to hand the crosses to the sniffers one by one. She hesitates when she gets to the last one; while knowing the ghosts had moved onto the afterlife eases some of her guilt, letting go is not the same thing as having something ripped away, and handing over the crosses has a bittersweet finality that the ghosts' sacrifice never had.

Biting back the stinging feeling in her throat, Maka quickly hands over the last cross to the sniffer and stands. "Can we go?"

As they're leaving the field, Maka glances back, even though the sniffers have long vanished in the distance; something shifts in her heart and she hopes it's good.

* * *

Marie and Stein are locked in a hushed conversation when they return, though it ends when she spots them. The strained expression on Marie's face fades when her eyes fall on Kid and the look on her face disappears. "I thought you wouldn't be coming till later."

"There were less poltergeists than Tezca counted," replies Kid. "It made for an easy night."

"That's a rarity for this job." Marie's gaze moves to Maka. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

She nods, and Marie smiles. "I'm glad to hear it."

Once they are all sitting, there is a brief silence as everyone glances at each other but says nothing.

"I know why you wanted to see me," Maka says finally at the same time Marie opens her mouth.

"Good." Marie looks slightly relieved, leaning back. "And what do you think?"

She hesitates. "I'm not sure." Logic tells her in no uncertain terms how ridiculous it is to consider their offer, in addition to what it might cost, but something stops her from saying so. Standing outside of the emotional insulation Maka has wrapped around herself is a heady feeling that's alien to navigate. In her lap, she pushes her hands together and runs her tongue over her teeth as she thinks. So much of her life has been a reaction to things outside of her control, allowing self-preservation to masquerade as choice. Her eyes fall back on the photographs of the poltergeists. She doesn't taste fear when she sees them now. Instead, there is a restless curiosity to discover what she is capable of, an impatience to find out what she can become as a reaper.

A nagging problem picks at her, however, and she looks up. "I can't travel or be out as long as you would need me to. My father would get suspicious."

"If you became a reaper, you wouldn't have to travel at all." Marie brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face. "Your territory as a reaper would mainly be in Orcus Hollow, so you would only have to be out for a few hours at a time."

Maka frowns. "Why?"

"The simple answer is Giriko." Stein answers. He pulls out a paper from the manila folder and pushes it towards Maka. "We measure the activity of non-active tears and thinned areas of the rift every two years. This is our record of the poltergeists and other supernatural activities in Orcus Hollow."

Maka examines the graph on the paper, gaze falling down to the dates at the bottom of the graph. At first, the dates are interspersed by the two years Stein mentioned, but the last dates on the graph turn daily, starting from Halloween to today. It's there that the steady and relatively low lines of the graph sharply turn upwards in a sudden and rapid spike.

"You notice the date of the change," Stein says after a moment.

She stares down the date in question with a grudging eye. "You don't need to say it."

"For the past decade or so, we've been trying to send probes across the rift, although none of our attempts were successful." He reaches down and sets a small metal sphere on the table. At a tap from Stein, it comes to life, supported by four legs on either side, which gives the machine a spidery appearance. "That changed a few weeks ago."

Maka leans forward to get a better look at the machine. It whirs loudly, scarred with strange gouge marks across its right side, while its legs are covered in a white silky material Maka recognizes instantly.

"We launched the probe from the remains of Giriko's house," says Stein, pulling her out of her thoughts. "As a place where the rift only was thinned, it should have failed immediately."

Maka wraps her hands around her forearms, grinding her heel against the memory of the spiders' clicks in her ears. "Why didn't it?"

"When you told us what happened on Halloween, it was clear Giriko didn't just try to send you and Soul to Abeyance," Marie says. "He attempted to send the entire space surrounding the house as well, most likely to create a big enough tear in the rift to allow the witches to cross back."

Visions of a darkness crawling underneath her skin winds a knot of dread in Maka's chest. "Did it?"

"Not quite." Stein switches off the probe. "A partial rip was created when the attempt failed, which is a problem on its own, but the real problem is how unstable the rift has become in that area."

"The rip is too deep to mend from Earth and, with the influx of poltergeists that we've been seeing, the likelihood of the rift collapsing increases," adds Azusa. "Which leaves us with two options." She straightens her glasses. ""The first is to send a team of reapers and clairvoyants with purification abilities inside the rift to fix the break."

"While we now know it's possible to make it out of the rift alive," Marie interjects with a nod to Maka, "It's still a suicide mission to send anyone into it, with no guarantee that they'll even be able to repair the tear."

"Which leaves us with our second and less ideal option." Azusa's lips are slightly pursed in disapproval as she speaks. "History shows that Halloween is the day when the rift thins the most, which would make it possible to fix the rift from the outside without having to go into it," she says. "However, Halloween is nearly a year away."

"It is the safer route, considering losing any of our reapers is not something the DWMA can afford." Marie's tone is that of someone who has discussed the issue a thousand times. "There will still be the increased numbers of poltergeists to deal with until then but it is something we can handle," Marie says, looking back to Maka. "Though it would be helpful to have a reaper local to the area."

Maka is silent for several moments.

"I'm on board," she says finally. "But I'm not the only one who has to say yes."

* * *

"So how did you die?"

Soul blinks rapidly against the resurgence of light. The room Liz and Patti have taken him to is completely white and has a light that is brighter and sharper than the Death Room. He finds Liz, nearly invisible against the wall. "Isn't that impolite to ask?"

He stretches his hand as he speaks-there is no sting so Maka can't be too far. The whispers are absent too, a fact he should be reveling in, but it's oddly disquieting to not see Maka, like the sun abruptly vanished.

"I had little use for manners when I was alive, and now even less so." Liz crosses her arms. "Death talk is small talk, anyhow."

Soul has known Liz for ten minutes, but talking to her is a little like lifting a mirror to himself; the way she uses sarcasm and bluntness to deflect her answers and gild her skepticism is all too familiar. She carries her distrust as a sword rather than a shield, however, pushing forward with a goading stare. "Well?"

"I was nearly tortured to death before having part of my chest removed to send my soul to Abeyance a hundred years ago," he answers, crossing his arms. "And you?"

She pauses and Patti's face pops into his vision suddenly. Her mouth is parted in a small 'O'. "You've been to Abeyance? What did it look like?"

Liz moves next to her sister. "Patti."

"I didn't see much of it," he answers. A soft numbness replaces the dreamy surrealness from earlier, winding itself around him like a snake and blotting most of his emotions. Even memories of Abeyance provoke no strong feelings, but only make the apathy settle in more deeply. "I was in a cocoon for most of it."

"A cocoon?" Liz raises her eyebrows, coming closer. A tattoo of a bird's head peeks out from under her jacket sleeve. Its beak is bared in a silent scream, a fierceness in its gaze that matches its owner. "Like a caterpillar?"

He shakes his head. "Spider."

Patti studies him curiously, gaze moving from his hair to his eyes. "How did you cross back?"

"Maka got hit by a truck and got trapped into Abeyance. She found me." Most of his memories from Abeyance are vague, clouded from waking up after a century, but the memory of seeing Maka for the first time and jumping with her are vivid. "She got revived at the hospital and brought me back."

"And is that why you have the eyes and the teeth?" she asks interestedly.

Soul frowns as she begins to loop around him. Where Liz wields her distrust with pointed words and stares, Patti hides hers with an avid curiosity and rapidfire questions. He's not sure who he fears more. "I've always had the sharp teeth."

"Really?" Patti tilts her head to the side as she continues to circle him. "Weird."

He gives a snort. "That's what I've been told."

"But the white hair and red eyes came after you died?" Liz asks, unfolding her arms. "You're sure?"

"Mirrors were around in my time so yes, I'm sure," he says. "And the ghost hunters already mentioned my appearance. It's fine, according to them."

"I'm only making sure," she retorts. "There's never been a ghost from Abeyance who bonded with someone before so I don't know if things are supposed to be different." Liz squints at him, frowning. "A ghost bound to a human doesn't really change their appearance and poltergeists just sort of decay and become a hive mind, they don't turn-" She stops, though he can guess where she was heading.

"They don't turn into monsters?" he finishes. The initial panic from Marie and Azusa's words has already been buried by his instinct to repress and detach but her words echo his thoughts too well.

"I didn't say that," Liz says defensively. She studies Soul, though he notices she avoids meeting his eyes. "And you're not a demon either, they have a witch's soul in them and we would have sensed that in you."

He laughs in spite of himself. "Didn't know I was up for contention for that but good to know I'm out."

"There are a lot of strange things you see here," Patti informs him. There's a bird's head on the side of her neck that matches her sister's tattoo. In a mock whisper she adds, "Sis likes to be sure you're not one of them. She's scared of ghosts."

Liz scowls. "Patti!"

Soul bites back his laugh. "You're afraid of ghosts, even though you are one?"

"So what if I am?" She turns her scowl on him. "I died, I didn't become a new person."

"She used to have me check under the bed for them when we were little," Patti says. "And she never went into the closet, unless Mom was yelling."

There is a sudden silence as a look comes across Patti's face that says she let something slip that she shouldn't have.

"Our mother was always drunk or trying to get drunk," says Liz after a beat. "The only time we had a mother was when she remembered we were sleeping after she accidentally set the apartment on fire."

"Her face when she finally remembered us was my first memory as a ghost so she was too late, obviously." Liz's voice is dry and impersonal, the mark of someone who has taught themselves not to care. "But she tried."

"Being a ghost isn't that much different than being alive anyways," chimes in Patti. She loops her arm with Liz's. "Being together is what's important."

By their expressions, Soul knows sympathy will only be taken as pity so he doesn't linger on the subject. "Do you like being bonded with Kid?"

Liz shrugs. "He's a stickler for the rules most of the time and he occasionally has a meltdown when he thinks he misarranged his sock drawer, but he's better than other people we've bonded with."

"I thought he looked a little bit like a zebra, but I liked him when we first met him," tacks on Patti.

"Aren't bonds permanent?" Soul says, brow furrowing. None of the ways he and Maka had found when they were trying to cut their bond ever worked, not even the so-called surefire methods.

Something shutters closed in Liz's expression. "Things are different outside of the DWMA."

"The poltergeists are everywhere," Patti says in a hushed voice, like they'll be able to hear her if she speaks too loudly. "They want to be whole again so they try to take your soul."

"It only took a few encounters with them to convince us to bond with the first psychic that offered us protection. But most psychics aren't interested in being altruistic." Liz laughs once, bitter and sharp. "They promised to keep us safe from the poltergeists, but instead they used us until the bonds would break. Then it was back to the streets until the poltergeists became too much to handle again."

Beside her, Patti shudders, pulling away from Liz.

"What do you mean by used?" he asks.

Liz sighs. "Not every ghost has the ability to possess humans or objects. The DWMA calls it the weapon gene, we call it a curse," she says. "Direct possession is the most powerful kind of possession because you're in a human body again, but it's also dangerous because of that." She wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Something about destabilizing the bond between ghost and human. Kid's lectured us about it a million times but he always gets overly wordy about it."

"It makes you weak and tired when you're done," says Patti, a frown twisting on her face. "You're not useful anymore after a while."

"The bond becomes too unstable to be effective, but by then it was weak enough to break on its own anyway." Liz reaches out, wrapping an arm around Patti's shoulders. "And then it was onto the next ghost for them."

"It's nothing to be angry about," she says suddenly, in a voice that conveys the exact opposite. "People will always put themselves first and even death doesn't change that."

Soul uncrosses his arms. "What about Kid?"

The expression on her face disappears and, after a moment, Liz says, "He does better than most." She hesitates before adding, "And he has a good heart, which I wouldn't say for a lot of people."

Patti nods in agreement at this; Soul senses the topic has reached its end so he moves on. "Is his name really Kid?"

"He didn't have a name before we met him," answers Patti with a dry smile, leaning on Liz. "That was the first thing we called him."

He raises his eyebrows. "How could he not have a name? Does it have to do with the curse he mentioned?""

"That's a question you'll have to ask him yourself," Liz says with a smirk. "It's a rather long story."

"Fair enough." He deliberates for a long moment before he asks his next question. "What happens when you possess someone too many times and the bond doesn't break?"

An intensely uncomfortable look comes on Liz's face as a pair of doors that Soul hadn't noticed slides open. Patti ducks out from under Liz's arm and makes a beeline for Kid as he enters with Maka and the rest. "You took long enough."

Liz seizes Soul's wrist, pulling him closer. He's too surprised to say anything-there's a papery feeling to her fingers, which aren't warm or cold. "If you push possession too far, it kills the human and destroys you. I saw it once and it's not pretty," she says in a low voice. "It's why your bond has to be strong. There's no room for doubt or secrets."

A coldness coils inside his chest as Liz releases him. "They've probably asked her to become a reaper, just so you know," she says with a nod towards Maka, who is heading towards them.

Soul has no time to reply as Liz moves away and Maka reaches him. He catches the flicker of concern on her face before it's briefly replaced by a small smile. "All right, there?"

"Okay enough." He drifts down to be closer to her-the sound of her voice is comforting in spite of the whispers that pulse inside him at her presence. "What did you think of Sir Cat Eyes?"

Maka gives him a mock glare. "That's not kind."

"But you do admit they resemble Blair's eyes."

She continues to glare at him, though a smile pulls at her lips. "We talked some more on the way here, mostly about reaping."

The cold feeling flares, though he does his best to mask it. "And?"

Maka bounces on her toes, bubbling with an enthusiasm he hasn't seen in weeks, and she leans forward, though he notices she's careful to keep space between them. "We're going on a poltergeist run with Kid, they want us to join the DWMA," she tells him in a rapid whisper. "It's your choice just as much as mine but I think it's a good idea an-"

"No."

He's much louder than he means to be and he senses the others' eyes turn on him.

Maka's expression freezes as she pauses, mid-sentence. "What?"

"No," he repeats, looking around the room. For once, the whispers are quiet, although he's surrounded by people. "I don't want to do this."

* * *

Maka stays quiet the entire drive home.

It's not a good sign after the barrage of questions she had thrown at him at the DWMA, Soul thinks as he peeks at her from the passenger seat. Outside, the wind whistles in a high-pitched scream, invisible in the inkiness of the night.

She clears her throat as they pass through Orcus Hollow, the only noise she's made since they got into the truck, brushing her bangs out of her face. He watches as her hand passes through her hair and remembers what it had felt like when they were joined together, pushing his hands together. The ability to touch is the thing he misses most since he crossed back-it had always been a comfort as much as a way to understand and be understood and the ache flares painfully the longer he looks at Maka.

But he's dead and he knows what would happen if he reaches out like he wants, so he keeps his hands in his lap and moves his gaze to the window.

He won't risk Maka's life by trusting that the flaws in his mind or what death is changing him into won't affect her.

When they reach the house, Maka doesn't wait for Soul and heads straight inside without looking at him.

Inside of Soul, the whispers hum.


	6. Aliferous

Adjective; having or bearing wings.

* * *

December

* * *

Sid switches off the neon open sign that blinks in the window of the diner's entrance, flips the lock on the diner's front door, and stretches his arms above his hand, fingernails brushing against the rather low ceiling of the diner. "Just call me an egg sunny side up."

From across the diner, Maka and Black Star ask in unison, "Why?"

"Because I'm fried." Sid gives the same hearty chuckle he always does, even though he's told the joke on at least a weekly basis since Maka was a child. "Your turn to close up tonight, Blake."

Black Star gives him a solemn salute and then turns back to Maka. The bells he's hung in his hair for Christmas (which is now dyed a dark green) chime discordantly as he lays his hands flat against the tabletop and leans forward. "Please."

"I'm pretty sure I meant no the first time I said it." Maka turns the page in her textbook and takes a sip of the shake Black Star brought out in an obvious attempt to sway her opinion.

"It'll only be for an hour and only on the weekends," he wheedles. "I'll pay you for the gas money."

"I recall someone saying they didn't need any more practice than was mandatory to be prepared for their driving test," she says as she sets her glass down. "I also distinctly remember someone rejecting my offer to help."

Something like chagrin creeps into Black Star's expression, likely the first and only time Maka will ever see it on his face. "There were some unforeseen obstacles."

"Such as?"

"Reality."

A scoff from the ceiling joins hers and she cuts her laugh short, resisting the urge to purse her lips. She snaps her book shut instead and meets Black Star's pleading eyes. With the exception of the events leading to the sriracha incident in eighth grade, she hardly refuses Black Star's requests that don't run the chance of injury or landing him in a chair across Spirit's desk at the police station. "You know that you can't drive alone."

Black Star's head perks up. "Is that a yes?"

She sighs. "Yes."

Over the whoop he gives, she warns, "The truck is in the middle of getting a new transmission as we speak." She closes her notebook and begins to pile her textbooks. "You'll guard it with your life."

"I knew you'd say yes." He raps the table with both hands and bounces in his seat. Where most people's capacity for enthusiasm diminish as they get older, Black Star's has only increased. "We can start tomorrow on the way to see Tsu."

Maka looks up from putting away her things. "What do you mean?"

"Don't you remember?" Black Star frowns in confusion. "We agreed to visit her for winter break and she would come back to Orcus Hollow for spring break."

His words bring up a vague recollection of promises made over a weeks-ago Skype call. "Now I do."

She doesn't miss the roll of his eyes. "Well now that you do, could you make the card for her Christmas gift?"

"And her present?"

"I got her a set of teas and a portable charger since most of her classes are on the opposite side of her dorms."

He says this matter-of-factly as he unties his apron and shucks it off. Maka knows if Black Star was trying to guilt her, he would say so to her face but that still doesn't stop the prickle of guilt from needling underneath her skin. Last year, she'd been too stuck in her head to remember Christmas, which is why he's gotten Tusbaki's gifts all on his own this year.

She squirms inwardly as she nods. Resentment is not something Black Star holds onto; he bounces back from fights and disagreements with a grin, their argument about where she went to on Halloween already long since dropped.

"I have some things that I knitted that Tsu might like," she says as she resumes packing away her books. "I'll bring those too."

"You said you were going to burn your knitting needles."

"I said I wanted to, not that I did," she answers, zipping her backpack shut and shrugging it on. "They're too expensive for that."

She stands, which prompts Soul to come down from his spot by the window. "It's getting late so I'll see you tomorrow."

"I could take you to the car shop, if you want." Black Star grabs his dish bin before rising as well. The makeshift lights catch the light from the diner's weakly glowing lamps overhead. "It should only take me twenty minutes to clean up the place."

"With the two of us on it, your motorized scooter probably goes slower than I walk." Maka tugs her backpack straps tighter and takes another swig of her shake before handing it to Black Star. "It's a ten minute walk at most, I'll be fine."

He doesn't answer but his face twists in a frown of disapproval.

Maka reaches over to ring the bell at the top of Black Star's hair. "We'll be over at ten."

His frown disappears. "We?"

She falters for an instant. "Me and the truck."

As they're exiting the diner, Soul speaks up. "You and the truck?"

"Well, you're always with me, aren't you?" Maka responds grumpily. "It's hard to remember not everyone can see you."

He hooks his hands behind his head as he drifts along beside her. "How touching."

Maka swallows the smile that pulls at her lips, sky painted a shade of violet that slowly deepens to navy as they walk down the sidewalk. It's also hard to remember she's upset at him while simultaneously remembering she's not supposed to be mad. After all, she had been the one who said that Soul had an equal input on whether they should join the DWMA, she reminds herself sternly.

It didn't keep her from being exasperated at his refusal to explain his immediate rejection of the DWMA's offer-the weeks between then have been filled with a tension that she can't understand and neither one of them acknowledges, in addition to the rigid distance Soul keeps.

"How did you celebrate Christmas?" she asks. "If you celebrated it, I guess."

"A lot of recitals took place on Sundays, so my parents were strictly the 'going to Sunday service for major holiday' types." Soul's foot goes through the half-frozen slush that the weatherman had called snow. "Didn't stop them from throwing the biggest holiday party in Orcus Hollow, though."

"I'm sure you were a big fan of those," she says wryly.

"The dances were my favorite."

"You look like the waltz would be your strong point." She veers in front of him suddenly, moving backwards. "Or maybe the tango."

He snorts, amusement flickering in his eyes. "Definitely the tango."

"Mind showing me?" She holds out her hand half-teasingly, although her heart doesn't seem to get the message, picking up speed.

The lightness on Soul's face dims slightly as he glances from Maka's hand to her face. "I've seen the way you dance and I don't think my feet would appreciate it."

Maka's disappointment is perplexing-she never thought he'd agree but it stings nonetheless. She hides it by sticking her tongue out and swinging back to walk next to him again. "I don't dance that badly."

"My eyes would beg to differ."

"And you wouldn't even feel it if I stepped on you," she points out.

"My soul would feel it."

Her laughter is cut off by a sudden movement catching the corner of her eye. The mouth of the alley is well-lit but it drowns in darkness in the middle; it doesn't keep Maka from spying the poltergeist standing in the center of the alley.

Soul drifts close as Maka hovers at the edge of the alleyway, careful to keep in the light. Now that she knows what they are, she searches for a human face in the poltergeist, but she sees none, just shadow. A series of the poltergeist's odd hisses and clicks fills the air as it spies Maka; she knows that whoever the poltergeist used to be is long gone, but she can't bring herself to move away.

Maka stares at the poltergeist for several more moments, eyeing it with a mix of curiosity and residual fear. There's a certain sympathy she feels for them - being forced to become something they never wanted to be is something she keenly identifies with. "Do you think anything would happen if I touched them?"

Soul doesn't quite look at the poltergeist. "You're the one who said you needed another soul to amplify your powers."

"It's what Kid said," she says. Her fingers flutter restlessly at her sides. "I just feel bad for them."

"Kid will be around to reap them eventually," he says, beginning to move away. "Anything you do will just annoy them."

Maka gives the poltergeist one last look before trailing after him.

Picking up her truck is quick; it rumbles to life the first time she twists the key in the ignition, and she lets out a sigh of relief as she flicks on the headlights and gives a wave to the mechanic.

Night seems to settle around them in the minutes it takes her to drive across town. There is hardly anything like traffic in Orcus Hollow but the streets feel unusually deserted tonight. Hardly anyone is on the sidewalks either with most stores already closed.

"It could be different." Her voice is quiet, though it sounds loud in the night's silence. "If we were able to help," she adds. It's hard to make out Soul in the dark but she senses how he stiffens.

His voice is equally quiet. "I already told you how I feel about it."

"You told me no and that was it," Maka corrects as they begin passing by the cemetery. The night hides the ghosts within it, although the rounded mounds of the gravestones are just visible. "There's a lot of good we could do in the DWMA."

"I know that-" He breaks off. For a long moment, there is only silence and she thinks that Soul is going to stay quiet when he finally speaks. "I need you to trust me on this."

"I would be with you if I understood you." The words burst out of her unwillingly-she's never been graceful about admitting what she doesn't understand. "Or where you'e coming from, at least."

Soul stares at her for a second. "Maka-"

"Forget it." A flush crawls up from her neck to her face and she turns her attention back to driving in time to spot the person standing in the middle of the road.

She slams on the brakes, the back of her head snapping back into the seat as her seatbelt jerks her back. Stars explode in her vision and she gasps for air, blinking rapidly. Beside her, she can hear Soul asking if she's okay, his voice tinny and distant.

Maka looks up as she claws at the button for her belt, yanking it to one side. Whoever is standing in the middle of the road hasn't moved, strangely no nearer than when she first spotted them. "Do you see them?"

Soul stops in the middle of whatever he's saying, following the direction of her gaze. "It's-" He trails off and then he shakes his head. "It's just a poltergeist."

"But they're always moving," she says. "And it's not a ghost either." She squints to try to see their face but the person is just out of view of the headlights' reach. "I think it's someone living."

"And I know it's a poltergeist," Soul counters. "I can feel it."

Maka hesitates. There is no shadowy aura around the person like she's seen with all other poltergeists but it strikes her as odd that they haven't moved. "What should we do?"

"It doesn't look like it's going to attack, go around it."

She glances in her side mirror. "The road is too small."

"Then drive through it." There is something bordering panic in his voice the longer Soul stares at the person in the road.

"And what good would that do?" Soul's tone sets off a nervous dread in her chest as Maka gestures at the person. "It would just come into the car."

The person lifts their head as she speaks, raising a hand in greeting.

She still can't see their face but a wave of relief washes through Maka. "See, they are alive."

"Because they waved at you?"

"They're solid," she says. "And have you ever seen a poltergeist wave?"

"Are you implying that poltergeists don't have hands?" he asks. "Initially, at least?"

She rolls her eyes. "I'm going to make sure they're okay."

"Wait." Soul doesn't speak until she's looking at him. "This is hypocritical coming from a ghost," he says, gesturing to the person, "But the fact that they were in the middle of the road and aren't coming any closer is exceptionally creepy, even if they're alive."

"That is true," Maka grudgingly concedes after a moment. She glances back to the person-they're rather frail-looking and their arms are long and spindly. "I don't think they'd be able to hurt me, though."

"Those are the famous last words of somebody." He runs a hand through his hair. "Why don't you call Kid?"

It's surprising that Soul would be the one to suggest it but Maka gives in with a sigh. "Fine."

Fishing the card the reaper had given her after their meeting from her backpack, Maka slowly deciphers the curling numbers of the card's elaborate script. Kid had said several times as they left to call if they changed their mind about joining the DWMA or needed help but it still feels mildly ridiculous to be calling about a person standing in the road.

Maka keeps her eyes on the person as the phone rings-they seem to have moved a few steps closer when she wasn't looking. They're dressed in a black robe that touches the ground and they have one hand clasped tightly around the elbow of their other arm, although she still can't see their face. She's distracted by a monotone voice that comes on after exactly eight rings, informing Maka that Kid Is away at the moment and to leave her name, number, and message. She hangs up instead and tosses the phone and card in the cup holder. "No answer."

"We-"

"I want to go home." She reaches across Soul to pull the spare flashlight she keeps in the glove compartment, the anxious fear from before coming alive again as she tests the flashlight and finds it has a weak beam.

Soul says nothing but he rises when Maka unhooks the lock to the car, hair going through the truck's ceiling.

Maka pauses in opening the door. "You don't have to come if you don't want to."

Soul shrugs away her words. "I'm with you, even when you're wrong."

She shakes the flashlight to see if the beam will become stronger to no avail. "Your support is boundless."

The static frigidness in the air sinks into Maka's bones as soon as she steps out of the truck. She shivers and lifts her flashlight, waving once with her free hand. "Hello."

Unlike a poltergeist, the person does nothing as the light falls on them. They also say nothing, however, which diminishes Maka's relief. Nor do they so much as flinch as Maka moves the light towards their face-she can't see their face, even though they're less than thirty feet away.

"Are you okay?" Her grip tightens on the flashlight as she takes a step forward, and, for the the first time since they lifted their hand, she sees the person move. They straighten-they seem to be saying something, but their voice is too low for Maka to hear their words.

"I can't hear you." Maka moves closer in spite of herself and Soul's warning, coming to a stop in the middle of the headlights' circle of light. She still can't their face.

They continue to speak but their voice is muffled and broken, like they're being strangled by something unseen. Their hand squeezes tightly around their arm; Maka can see how much their fingers are digging into their skin. "Do you need help?"

A nervous giggle escapes from them, a rapid titter that ticktick ticks in Maka's ears. The closer Maka gets, the more unsettling their appearance becomes; there's nothing she can pinpoint but something is distinctly wrong about them. In her ear, Soul mutters, "I don't like this."

They don't move but Maka can feel the person's stare shift, like they can see Soul too.

"I know," she says softly. She decides to try one more time, moving only one step further this time. They're no more than ten feet away now, bathed in the soft glow of the headlights. "What's your name?"

Their head falls to one side, as if it'd been snapped. It lolls forward, towards the light.

She still can't see their face.

"Can we go back to the car?" Soul whispers urgently. "Now?"

Maka inches back half a step.

The person is still but the darkness around them moves, shifting and rippling like it's re-shaping itself until Maka sees it.

Wings.

They scrape the uppermost branches of the trees above the person, who does nothing but stay bowed as the wings unfurl themselves and begin to writhe, so dark that they swallow the night.

Maka stumbles backwards as they come her way; her scream is dead in her throat but her fear pulls her to the truck. She backpedals, feels her feet tangle together, and rights herself in time to slam into the still-open truck door.

She breaks her fall with her arm, the side of her head connecting with the door. The flashlight rolls out of her hand and the world doubles, filling her with a nauseating dizziness that only fades when she shuts her eyes. She breathes in and out; there's no sound of the wings or the person attached to them, but then again, they never made a sound when they moved in the first place.

And then suddenly there are a cacophony of voices above her head. Maka reaches out uselessly, forcing her eyes open. Her vision has stopped spinning, thankfully. "Soul?"

"Right here." His face is inches from hers. "You okay?"

"I think so." She pushes herself up into a sitting position and touches her temple, wincing when a sharp ache pulses against her fingers. The muddle of voices persists. "Who else is here?"

"That would be us." Liz's face edges into her vision on her other side, her sister peeking over her shoulder. "Though I'm wondering why we're even here in the first place."

"Liz." Kid nearly blends into the darkness, with the exception of the white streaks in his hair. He's wearing the same cloak that he had on the day they met, though the skateboard in his hand is new and out of place. He holds out his free hand and she takes it, Soul rising with her.

"Beelzebub." Kid raises the skateboard. "Stein made it for traveling to a place without a DWMA portal," he says. "When I called you back and didn't get an answer, I thought something might be wrong, a particularly angry poltergeist perhaps." Kid glances about him. "But I don't see anything."

"There was…" Maka's head throbs as she looks around; there's no sign of the person or anyone else, other than themselves and the ghosts. "There was someone here."

"We nearly crashed into them," adds Soul. "They were acting strange."

"And part of the reason I called," Maka says. Her headache is slowly ebbing away, but it's still hard to concentrate. "We weren't sure if it was a person or poltergeist."

"Obviously, it was a person." Liz folds her arms. "Who is probably somewhere having a heart attack."

"It wasn't." Maka shakes her head, which turns out to be a mistake. "I got out of the car to make sure they were okay," she says, willing the world to right itself on its axis. "They wouldn't answer, no matter what I asked."

"They started laughing." She hesitates; the wariness that years of disbelief and pretending the things she sees aren't real is hard to shake. "They had wings."

Patti breaks the brief silence that follows. "What did they look like?" she asks interestedly. "Like a bird?"

"I didn't get a good look at them," Maka says. "But they weren't a normal person or a poltergeist." A thought, unbidden and unwanted, occurs to her now that she can think clearly. She fights the cold dread knotting in her stomach. "Was it a demon?"

"Demons leave a particular energy behind, which can't be changed or concealed," Kid says. "There's no signs of it here."

Relief is heady, for a moment, and then it fades. "Then what was it?" she asks.

Kid opens his mouth, almost speaks, and then closes it. "I'm sorry," he says. "But I don't know."

* * *

Soul sits in his corner of the room, watching Maka pace around the room and pretend to look for the scarf lying in front of him on the desk while in reality she's looking outside the window. He knows what she went through with the mosquito demon as a child and how today mirrored her experiences too well, but the fact that she's hardly spoken to him since Kid left and only had a wooden exchange with Spirit worries him.

(He also knows from experience that she says what's on her mind eventually, even if it takes months to do it.)

After another few minutes of Maka wandering around the room, however, he speaks up. "I think this is what you're looking for," he says.

Maka glances down to where he points, giving an exaggerated sigh of relief. "There it is."

She crosses the room to pick it up and he ignores the upswell in the whispers-even pain becomes routine. After she puts the scarf away, she sits on the bed and pushes herself until her back is against the wall.

"Want me to get the lights?" She starts at his question, and shakes her head slightly.

"How is your head feeling?" he asks. Prickles of heat have been gnawing at his hand since she ran into the truck door, especially when she'd nursed the spot where she'd hit her head with ice.

"Okay enough, if I don't touch it." She flops onto the bed, wincing slightly. For several moments, she's quiet and then she turns to face him. "What do you think?"

Soul doesn't have to ask what she means. "You're just going to get a fancy version of 'I don't know.'"

That prompts a smile from her. "I still want to hear it."

He pauses before he speaks. "I don't think it was a demon, either," he says, neglecting to mention why. "I think that whatever else exists on the other side of the rift, besides demons and poltergeists, has been waiting for the opportunity to cross over."

"And now it has," Maka concludes.

"It has," he echoes, hand moving to his chest.

Maka meets his eyes. "That's a pretty fancy 'I don't know.'"

"I have lots of spare time."

It's not a laugh that she gives exactly, but it's close. She rolls on her back. "Could you turn off the lights?"

Soul flicks his finger and the lights wink out-he doesn't need to be near the object he wants to move anymore, which he's not sure to be glad or nervous about.

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

There's silence in the room for a few minutes.

Maka's voice is quiet, although he still hears the slight tremor. "I just want to feel safe."

"I want to be safe."

A variety of answers spring to mind, all of them vague and useless for someone who has been haunted her whole life.

"I'm sorry that I can't give you that," Soul says finally. "But I'm here all night."

She lets out a loud, shaky exhale but her voice is steady. "That's enough."

Maka turns over, pulling her blankets higher. "Good night."

"Good night."

Soul gazes at the moon, watching it slowly creep up higher and higher into the sky as Maka's breathing slips into the slow and even rhythm of sleep. His hand doesn't move from his chest as he stares at the sky. Even hours later, he still feels the buzz from the jolt in his chest as clearly as when he first saw the creature standing out in the middle of the road.

He tilts his head back and tries to erase the memory from his mind.

(There are so many memories he wishes would disappear, but he's not sure what would remain of him if they did, if there even would be anything left.)

When he saw the thing standing in front of Maka's truck, he had known that it wasn't a poltergeist because the same jolt that had ricocheted inside his chest nearly four weeks ago had come alive again.

Feed.

And in that jolt had been a familiarity, a recognition. He pushes the thought out of his mind but it still comes.

Kindred spirits.


	7. Sciamachy

Noun; a battle against an imaginary enemy

* * *

Maka wakes up in the morning with her headache mostly gone, although a mild throbbing remains when she lifts her head. Remnants of her dreams stick to her like strands of silk, which she thinks she can taste in her mouth; it takes a moment to make certain that she's still in her bed and not trapped on giant spider web.

"It's nearly nine." The sunlight filtering through the window makes Soul hard to find but it's soothing when she does, further proof that her dream was only that. "Feeling better from yesterday?"

"Yes and no." She sits up, rubbing her face with both hands. There's a coolness in the one that held Soul's hand in Abeyance but she can't tell if it's pleasant or the beginning of a deeper chill. "I dreamed I was dead again."

"Not fun."

"It was just as terrible as the time I was really dead."

She raises her face from her hands. "Is that insensitive?"

He shrugs. "About the same as calling life a bottomless pit of disappointment."

A corner of her mouth pulls upward. "Fair enough."

"It was so real," she says after a brief pause. "You weren't there."

She looks up at Soul; his eyes are a lighter shade of crimson, different than the maroon shade they take when he's distant. "Well, I'm definitely here, as promised," he says. "Not in the flesh, exactly, but in spirit, yes."

Her aim with her pillow is spectacularly off-target. "If I become a ghost when I die, I pray I never make half as many ghost puns."

"Not everyone recognizes genius."

Spirit is in the living room when Maka comes downstairs, engrossed in the house of cards he's constructing on the coffee table. "Hey, sweetie."

"Hey." She heads into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator, taking out the pitcher of orange juice Spirit makes on the weekends."You going out to bowling practice today?"

"Can't let the fire fighters beat us for the third year in the row," says Spirit as he carefully places another card on the growing tower and waits to see if it will fall or not. "I'm meeting the team in a bit."

She notices the open folder next to him. "Another missing dog report?"

"Another acid victim," he answers, running his thumb across the card in his hand. "Another person was found with the same injuries as the unusual death case from last month, though the body was found near the woods on the border of here and Moricio."

"So it's no longer an unusual death case now," she says.

"It's a murder investigation," Spirit agrees ruefully. "First one we've had in six years."

He looks up at Maka. "You're still going over to see Tsubaki with Black Star?"

She nods as she finishes the glass of orange juice and moves back into the kitchen to put it in the sink. "We're going to be over for lunch and dinner probably."

"I don't think it's a good idea to be driving out after dark with everything that's happened." Spirit frowns, lying down the rest of the cards in his hand. "And especially after almost hitting that deer yesterday."

It takes Maka a moment to remember the story she told Spirit to explain why she was so quiet at dinner. "I have an extra set of eyes with me this time and I know self-defense," she says, omitting the fact that she won't be the one driving. "It'll be fine."

His frown doesn't go away. "Black Star only has a driving permit."

"Doesn't mean he can't keep an eye out for stray deer."

Spirit makes a noise that can be interpreted as reluctant agreement. He picks up a card and leans forward again, oblivious to Soul who hovers above the card tower, fingers not quite touching the top card.

Maka grabs her backpack, stored with Tsubaki's card and gifts, and walks into the living room to where Spirit sits to give him a one-armed hug. He keeps the silver threading through his hair well-hidden but there's no way to hide it up close. "I'll let you know when I get there and when I'm coming back."

He pats her shoulder. "Could you get the mail on your way out?"

"Sure." She straightens and gives Soul a look as his hand grazes the tower.

Spirit follows her gaze. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing." She takes the card from Spirit's hand and balances it on the top of the card tower, giving Spirit a triumphant look when it doesn't fall over.

"Impressive," he says as she gives his arm a squeeze and moves away to the front door.

"I learned from the best," she answers, tugging her hat on before she opens the door. "Have fun bowling."

The promise of snow hangs in the blast of cold air that buffets Maka as soon as she opens the door; she dances in place as she opens the mailbox that's nailed next to their front door and peers in.

"Have you ever thought about telling him again?" Soul asks as she takes out the mail and begins to sort through it. "About seeing ghosts?"

She lets out something halfway to a laugh. "Given how well that went the first time, I generally ignore thinking about that. And things are finally settled for once," she says. She stops looking through the mail and lets the sorted mail fall back in the pile. It's mostly ads anyway, things that she knows Spirit won't mind her throwing away. "I don't want to ruin it."

As she's opening the recycling can at the end of the driveway, something wedged between the ads falls out and she bends down to pick up a postcard with a picture of a forest with mountains in the background. It only takes a single glance at the handwriting on the back of the card to know where it's from.

Maka runs her thumb over the place where her mother wrote her name. She hadn't heard from her since the phone call last month and she's similarly avoided thinking about it too much.

"Is it?"

She nods once to Soul's question. There's not much written on the postcard other than a generic greeting and a couple lines about where she has traveled over the years. It ends with her mother wishing her well, and in it, Maka sees the not-so-subtle question.

She rereads the postcard again, and then again, until Soul speaks again. "Are you going to answer her?"

"I still don't know." Maka throws the pile of mail in the trash and swings the lid shut.

When she gets into the truck, she tucks the postcard in the front pocket of her backpack.

* * *

Tsubaki sweeps Maka and Black Star into a brief hug at her dorm's doorway before releasing them quickly. "Don't judge."

Stepping back, she lets them into the room, which resembles an upended library that hasn't been cleaned in days. Tsubaki usually wears exhaustion gracefully, but the five empty coffee mugs lying on her desk speak otherwise as Maka and Black Star enter, Soul following above overhead.

"My roommate left a few days ago, so I have our whole room to myself." She flits around the room, snatching books and clothes off the floor. Her hair is tied back in a messy bun, and there is the faint smell of fish that sticks to her clothes as she hauls away a pile of sweaters from a pair of bean bag chairs and lays it on her bed. "Which means the mess is mine."

"You're in college, which also means messy is a fashion style," Maka says, taking a look around the room. Tsubaki's half of the room is marked by the bulletin board over her desk; it's mostly covered in pictures of Tsubaki with her family or of her hanging out with Maka and Black Star. All of her family photos are from the last few years, although Maka catches a glimpse of a faded family picture peeking from behind the calendar pinned on the left side of the board.

There is a false edge to Tsubaki's laugh as she perches on the edge of her bed. "I'd rather not become a stereotype." She gestures to the bean bags and the bed. "You can sit."

Maka takes a seat next to her while Black Star picks up an open notebook from her desk before falling back on one of the bean bags. He flips it around, showing the anatomical sketch on the page. "Looks like your time at the fish lab is going well."

"That's the brain of a squid, actually," Tsubaki says. "One of the grad students in the lab asked me to help out with a project of theirs."

Black Star raises an eyebrow. "I hope you're getting credit for all of these projects you're helping out with."

"Being a lab assistant means doing all of the work while expecting none of the credit." Tsubaki moves aside some of her books to scoot back further on the bed. "But my research professor looks for new projects to take on in the spring, which is why I stayed over break to start on my proposal."

Maka peeks at the spines of the books near her, all of which have a multitude of colorful sticky notes poking out of them. "It looks like you're writing a thesis instead of a proposal," she says. "Do you sleep?"

"I'm making efficient use of my time." Tsubaki's tone is light, but there is a distracted agitation in her words that's obvious now that she's not moving. "Occasionally that includes sleeping."

"Well, now is the time for gifts," declares Black Star. He pulls out the card that Maka made last night while she unzips her backpack to bring out the basket she and Black Star had arranged and wrapped before they began their drive.

Tsubaki protests as she's given the card and basket. "I thought we agreed on a no-gift policy this year."

"Exceptions are made for swamped biotechnology majors," Black Star replies.

She gives him a look but opens the basket, eyes lighting up at the portable charger and scarf Maka knitted. "My phone's battery always dies before my classes end and my face freezes when I go across campus," she says as she pulls Maka into a hug and holds out an arm for Black Star, holding them tightly. "Thank you, I love it."

"You might want to hold off on saying that until you see Maka's card," Black Star says in a muffled voice against Tsubaki's shoulder.

"Hey." Maka lifts her head, scowling. "I spent a lot of time on those candy canes."

"And they still look like miniature barber poles."

She levels a veiled glare from Black Star to Soul, who laughs from the other side of the room. "You were the one who asked me to make the card."

"Because I knew it'd be hilarious," he answers casually as he leans back.

"And I'm sure I'll love it either way," Tsubaki interjects.

Maka digs in her backpack, tossing a small package to Black Star. "Your card is computer-generated."

Black Star stares down at the package for a moment. "Well, now I feel like an asshole."

She arches an eyebrow. "For making fun of my art skills?"

"For listening to you when you said not to get you a gift!"

"It's only a pair of earmuffs," she says. "I didn't think that a hat would fit with your hairstyle choices."

He jumps to his feet. "I'm going to the campus store."

"I don't think it's open," Tsubaki calls as he shoots out of the door.

"He'll be back with something either way," Maka says, giving her eyes a roll as Tsubaki stares after him in mild exasperation.

"That's what I'm worried about."

Maka rises to stretch her feet and twists around to face Tsubaki. Now that she can get a proper look at Tsubaki, she can see the strain behind her smile, along with the fading shadows underneath her eyes. "How are you handling the first year stress?"

"I think you mean how is the stress handling me." Tsubaki seems to deflate, shoulders sagging. "I don't know, it's nothing." She rubs her eyes. "It's probably just the pressure of taking five courses, being a lab assistant, and trying to have a social life."

"That can happen," Maka says cautiously. Tsubaki doesn't hold onto hurt as tightly as she does, the result of being born with a stubborn softness, but it leaves its impression and she processes the impact quietly. "So long as you're taking care of yourself too."

"And you?" Tsubaki asks. "How has life been?"

She doesn't miss how Tsubaki avoids the question but she doesn't press. "School is school, so normal as usual," Maka says as last night replays in her head. Not being able to be fully honest is a dull ache she has yet to get used to. "Black Star almost burnt down the chemistry lab last week."

Tsubaki shakes her head. "He told me it was an accident."

"To be fair, the chemistry club was giving a hands-on demonstration about how chemicals burn different colors." She drifts over to the desk-there aren't many pictures of Tsubaki on campus yet.

"And your dad?"

"More responsibility, but he seems to be handling it well." Her eyes fall back on the picture behind the calendar-the person holding Tsubaki in their arms is hidden, but given the wheelchair in the background, she can guess who it is. She drums her fingers against the desk, measuring the words in her mind before she speaks them aloud. "I got a postcard from my mom."

Tsubaki's eyes widen. "Today?"

"A whole five years later."

"What did it say?"

"I have it, actually." Maka's heart thrums rapidly in her chest as she goes to her backpack and digs for the postcard. The meeting at the DWMA and its aftermath had entirely driven her mother's call out of her mind, and when she had remembered, she hadn't resisted the instinct to bury the memory.

She brings it out now, along with the postcard. "A few weeks ago, I got a call from her."

Tsubaki takes the card, studies the front for a few moments, and then flips it over to the back. "She's in France," she says as she reads.

"And she's been to Venice and Tokyo too." Maka tries and fails to keep the simmering anger out of her tone as she sits back down next to Tsubaki.

"Did you answer her call?" she asks, holding out the card.

"Nope." She takes back the card and puts it away. "She's tried a couple more times but I didn't answer then, either."

"Do you want to answer?"

It frustrates her that her answer doesn't change, no matter who asks. "I don't know."

"Have you asked yourself if you want to?"

She's quiet for a minute. "Not particularly."

"That's probably where you should start." Tsubaki is gentle, even when she's smashing the truth over her head. "Though I know that's hard to do."

"Yeah." Maka holds back a sigh. "It is."

"And if you need to talk to someone about it, I'm generally up till the early hours of the morning," Tsubaki says, neatly closing the subject. "My coherency gets lost sometime around two, however."

She huffs something close to a laugh. "You're overworking yourself."

"I'm aware."

The seriousness in Tsubaki's voice is uncharacteristic. "The teas from Black Star should help," Maka suggests after a moment. "Both with the stress and the sleep."

She shakes her head. "Getting to sleep isn't the problem." Tsubaki's words sound forced and almost unwilling.

Maka frowns. "Then what is?"

Tsubaki unclips her hair, shakes it out and bunches it in one hand. Her gaze is unfocused as she stares at the floor. "I've been dreaming about him again."

Maka doesn't need to ask who she means-Masamune is the only hurt that Tsubaki refuses to let go of. Although Tsubaki was four years younger, the rare blood disorder her brother had been born with had forced her to grow up quickly at a young age. She took and felt more responsibility than she had to, and when Masamune's kidneys started failing and she wasn't a match, she had blamed herself when he died a few months later.

Maka glances at Soul, and then she looks at Tsubaki. "What kind of dreams?"

"They change often," she says. "Sometimes we're kids again, sometimes we're somewhere we've never been before." Tsubaki hesitates. "But it always comes down to the same thing. Choosing between me or him." She lets go of her hair, hands dropping to her lap. "I always choose myself."

"It's easier to focus on all of this," she says, gesturing to the textbooks, "And everything else than to be in my head."

"Tsu-"

"I know what it means," she says, waving it away. "I've been to the university's counseling center. Misplaced guilt and delayed grieving."

Maka fumbles for a moment; she prefers troubleshooting to comforting, and right now, she has no idea which Tsubaki needs. "Did it help?"

Tsubaki's mouth splits into a smile too harsh to be sincere. "I got a prescription for antidepressants."

"Is that why you don't want to go home?" she asks. "So your parents don't find out?"

"There's nothing to find out." Tsubaki says, shaking her head. "I haven't filled it."

Maka weighs her words carefully. "Do you want to?"

She answers with a shrug.

"Have you asked yourself if you want to?"

Tsubaki rolls her eyes. "That's very clever."

"But still sincere."

For a long moment, Tsubaki is quiet. "I think I need to be home to think about that."

"That's a fair answer."

She looks at Maka. "Is it okay if I hitch a ride?"

Maka nudges her shoulder with her own. "No need to ask questions you know the answer to."

At that moment, Black Star chooses to make his entrance with a loud bang. "The campus store was open."

He strides in and presents Maka with a tiny potted cactus. "I know you hate dead things so I got you something that you only have to water it once a week."

"Wonderful," she says, accepting the cactus as Soul laughs in the background.

* * *

Dusk is beginning to touch down by the time they leave Tsubaki's dorm. Soul feels slightly useless as he watches Maka and Black Star help Tsubaki load her things in Maka's truck, something he tells Maka when she makes a detour to the vending machine in front of the dormitory halls.

"Considering your help would get the school investigated by Ghost Hunters , it's probably best if you reserved it for organizing my bookshelf or helping me clean the kitchen," she says, bending down to retrieve the bottle of water from the machine.

"Or watering your cactus once a week," he adds. "Since you hate dead things."

"It was a defining characteristic when I was younger," she says as a light blush appears on her face. "Obviously, it's changed."

"Pretty recently, it seems."

"About a year and half in the making," she says, taking a sip of water. "Hopefully my gift makes up for some of the middle months."

He blinks. "A gift?"

"It's on the top shelf of my closet, which is why I haven't let you go in there for the past month." She turns her gaze to her water bottle, blush deepening. "It's not a gift exactly, but it's the closest word for it."

Death, Soul finds, does not keep the somersault feeling from springing to life in his stomach. "What is it?"

She hesitates "I should keep it a secret but-" Her eyes move back to Soul's. "I traced Wes' life through the newspapers and some TV interviews he gave about you and made it into a kind of scrapbook."

"It's not the same as actually being there," Maka says quickly in response to his silence. "But I thought it would help fill in some of the gap."

'"It will." He finds his voice. "It's hard to remember what he looked like sometimes or what his voice sounded like or even imagine him alive-" He's on the edge of rambling so he cuts himself off. "Thank you."

The dying light paints the sky in a rainbow of iridescence, but it is Maka's smile that is mesmerizing. "I would have brought it along but it would have been hard to give to you."

"Giving a dead person a gift is difficult," he agrees before pausing. "How do you think she's going to do?"

"Tsubaki is strong," Maka says as they head towards the doors to the dorms. "It'll be tough, however, I-"

The doors open as she reaches for the handle, and Black Star stares at Maka curiously, arms full with a box full of books Tsubaki rented. "Who are you talking to?"

Maka hides her jump with a scowl. "Myself."

He raises his eyebrows at that but doesn't comment. "We're ready to go after this," he says. "Tsubaki is already waiting by the truck."

"I hope you know that I'll be the one driving home," she says as they head out to the parking lot.

"But driving in the dark would be good practice," he protests.

"Good practice at getting my license revoked."

They argue all the way back to the truck, but Maka wins out in the end. Soul takes a spot in the truck bed; becoming accustomed to the pain inflicted by the whispers had lulled him into a false sense of security that his ride with Maka and Black Star in the morning had shattered.

Soul can feel the whispers waiting to expand into a thousand needlepoints to pull apart his mind, but it's dim enough that he can tilt his head back and watch the stars get eaten up and spat back out by the storm clouds crawling across the sky.

The muffled sound of Maka's laugh is what makes him lift his head; he begins to drift closer so he can catch the conversersation thread that made her laugh before he realizes what he's doing.

He moves back to his spot and stares at the empty spaces between the stars, hands curling in his lap. Promising Maka to be here in the aftermath of Giriko's ambush and then again last night was simple to promise and easy to fulfill with their bond, but it is increasingly clear that he is not enough in so many ways other than what the whispers plant in his head, starting with the fact that he is dead.

It does little good to dwell on since there's no option other than to stay (and even if he did, he thinks he likes being around her too much to want to leave) but it doesn't keep the thoughts from twisting like a knife into his head.

These thoughts keep him preoccupied until they reach the shelled remains of old Orcus Hollow, and he hears rather than feels the truck hit something very hard in the middle of the road. The truck swerves, riding alongside the edge of the road, which drops off sharply into a ditch.

Soul braces himself on instinct and the truck abruptly stops, momentum causing it to tip forward dangerously before righting itself.

There's a flurry of voices from the cab of the truck, and then Maka, Black Star and Tsubaki exit from the truck. Black Star sports a bloody nose and Tsubaki's face is nearly the same shade as his hair. "I thought we were going to drive off the road," she says, peering over to where the tire on the passenger side hangs off the asphalt. "What did we hit?"

"Whatever it was, it was very sharp," Black Star says thickly through his nosebleed, pointing to the rear tire. Not only is it completely deflated, but pieces of the rubber still clinging on are shredded like something tore threw them.

Soul looks at Maka, who has remained silent. She doesn't appear hurt but there's a horrified kind of clarity frozen on her face that tells him she saw what hit the truck. Blinking rapidly, she comes back to life, eyeing the flat tire. "I have a spare tire in the truck bed."

"I'm going to find some tissues for Black Star first," says Tsubaki. "He can't do anything with that nosebleed."

"Yes, I can!" Black Star takes his hand from his nose, which results in fresh rivulets of blood running down his face.

Tsubaki tugs on his arm. "No, you're not."

"I'll get started and you can help when the bleeding stops." Maka strides for the truck bed, pulling down the bed's door.

Soul joins her. "What happened?"

Maka opens the tool compartment and hauls out the box inside. "I saw something right before we hit."

"Was it that thing from last night?"

"No, but-" She shakes her head. "I must have seen wrong."

He frowns. "What did you see wrong?"

Black Star and Tsubaki appear then, Black Star with several tissues stuffed up his nose. "Here," Maka says quickly, handing him the toolbox, before turning back to the truck. "Tsubaki and I can carry-"

She trails off as the compartment door swings open, completely empty.

"Where's the spare?" asks Black Star, peering over Tsubaki's shoulder.

"Obviously not here," Maka snaps. There's an edge of panic in her voice. She pushes her hair out of her face, taking a deep breath. "My dad said he was going to check the air pressure on all the spares a while ago so he must have forgot to put it back."

"A lot of good it does us now," grumbles Black Star.

"What does help us is calling for help," Tsubaki says before Maka can respond, pulling out her phone from her pocket. "Although a signal would also help."

Maka takes out her phone as well. "I don't have a signal either."

They all look at Black Star, who shugs sheepishly. "It might be on my nightstand in my room."

"A lot of good it does us now," Maka says pointedly. She sighs. "We shouldn't stay in the middle of the road."

"There's some houses that aren't too burned out up ahead." Black Star points across the road. "And occasionally, you can get a good signal."

Tsubaki eyes the burned out houses in the distance. "So long as we don't go into any of the houses since they might be unstable."

Soul glances at Maka; he's sure that she feels the soft murmurs coming from the old town too.

He can't read the look on her face as she stares at the town's corpse. She moves finally, starting for the town. "We go back to the truck after we call for help."

"Yes, yes," Black Star says, tentatively pulling a tissue from his nose as he follows. "We all know how much you hate the old ghost town."

An odd kind of nostalgia sweeps through Soul as they enter Orcus Hollow; the hushed murmurs of the dead pause at their entry, but he doesn't dare to look at any of the ghosts that might be peering out of the windows.

The remains of the town carry a hollow loneliness that screams louder than anything Soul has ever heard. Overgrown plants and weeds throttle what Soul recognizes as the main road that used to split the town in two, the burned out hulls of buildings looming over them like the rotting bodies of giants, although there are a few buildings that seemed to have survived the brunt of the fire.

"There's the building I set fire to on Halloween." Black Star peels off towards a large two-story store that still has fresh burn marks. "I got a signal there."

Tsubaki twists to Maka, eyebrows raised. "Still a no-questions favor?"

"Very much so," she says. "Though I maintain I asked for a distraction, not arson."

Soul keeps his voice low as they makes their way to the store, even though Tsubaki nor Black Star can hear him. "You okay?"

They're far away enough that Maka can look at him. "Alright enough."

Black Star leaps onto the porch when they reach the store and spins to face them, floorboards creaking ominously under him. "Any luck?"

Tsubaki glances at her phone. "Nothing yet."

"Same here," Maka says with a sigh.

"I was on the second floor when I got your call," says Black Star. He pushes past the tape barrier put up by the fire department and opens .

"What did I say about going into buildings?" Tsubaki hisses, although she follows him in anyway.

Soul turns in the doorway when he doesn't sense Maka behind him and sees her pausing on the front steps. "Something wrong?"

She gives her head a shake, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets as she heads up the steps. "I have a bad feeling, but that's how I feel about everything at the moment."

Soul feels his eyes widen as he trails after Maka and looks around; the outside was too burned for him to remember it, but the glass counter at the far end of the store and the black and white tiles of the floor are instantly recognizable.

"This was the confectionary I would go to with Wes on the weekends," he says, drifting forward to examine the counter. The bronze pole where the owner would hang freshly made batches of lollipops is still there, albeit melted and tarnished, and for a moment, he can see the store come to life again, hear the music on the vinyl record in the corner as Wes waits for him to choose which candy to buy.

"There's nothing." Tsubaki's voice breaks the illusion, and the store is empty and gutted again. She looks up from her phone, leaning on the railing of the staircase that led to the confectionary's supply room.

"We're going to head up," Black Star says, already tapping his foot against the first stair. "You coming?"

"I'm going to stay on the first floor," Maka answers with a discreet glance to Soul. "See if I could find a signal someplace here or nearby."

Tsubaki frowns. "Shouldn't we stick together?"

"This isn't a horror movie." Maka edges closer to Soul. "And you're only one floor away."

"Yet you insist like sounding like you're in one," Tsubaki sighs. "Don't wander too far," she warns. "Yell if you need anything."

"I will." Maka moves to the glass counter by Soul but she doesn't speak until Black Star and Tsubaki are out of earshot. "Are you okay being here?"

He nods, even though he's not sure he should. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"It's the place where you lived." She walks behind the counter, peering in the empty racks that would hold the candy. "It doesn't bother you to see it like this?"

He shrugs, heading for the back room behind the counter. "It's people that mattered, not the place," he says, finding that he means it. "And they're gone now."

Maka follows him, opening the door and looking down at her phone. "But the mem-" She freezes as her eyes lock with something in the corner in the room.

Soul traces her gaze across the room to the the woman crouched below the window. The woman takes no notice of either of them as she stares down at the ground with a hollow look in her eyes, fingers dragging against the floor in a rote, mindless motion. Moonlight streams through her as easily as the glass above and she has her face half-hidden in her hair as she mumbles something to herself over and over.

Soul glances at Maka, who looks horrified, gripping the door knob tightly. "Is she a poltergeist?"

"Look at the other side of her face," she whispers.

He looks back at the woman. Her head moves back and forth a little as she scrapes her nails across the floor, and Soul tilts forward, not wanting to move any closer. It takes a few moments to register the strands of coiling and uncoiling shadow that make up the other half of her face.

"It's wrong." The poltergeist speaks up for the first time. Her voice is slow and garbled. "I don't want to be here."

Maka starts but she doesn't back away. "What do we do?"

He gestures to the door. "Leave. Shut the door tightly."

She scoffs. '"And hope she just stays put?"

Soul nods. "Exactly, let's go."

The poltergeist speaks again. Her fingers scrabble against the floor more desperately. "It's wrong."

He makes the mistake of looking over at the poltergeist again. The side where her face is consumed by shadow is rotting, but not in the way dead things do; her collarbone is caved in and crumbling away, bleached a sickly white while threads of shadow slowly inch through and take over.

Maka glares at him. "You remember what Marie said happens to the poltergeists. What if that's happening right now?"

He matches her glare. "There's nothing we can do."

"There is one thing we can do," she says stiffly. "But you won't agree to it."

He fights to make himself heard over the moans of the poltergeist. "Direct possession is dangerous."

"Not when it's only done a few times," she says in a fierce whisper. "We just have to touch her."

He shakes his head. "I still don't agree with it."

Maka bursts. "Why?"

He throws his hands up in the air. "I'm trying to protect you!"

The poltergeist lets out a harsh rattle, a noise that claws at Soul's ears, and they both turn in time to see the wings from last night silently enter through the tiny gap between the glass and the window sill. They wrap around the poltergeist like chains, pausing before they jerk the poltergeist through the wall.

A low, familiar clicking fills the air before either of them can react, and Soul catches a glimpse of the spider's reflection in the window right as it drops down onto the floor.

* * *

Maka does not scream when the spider lands in front of her and Soul, pincers dripping with a clear venom that makes the wood blacken as it drips onto the floor. Its body isn't yet covered in steely chitin and it's smaller than the other spiders she saw in Abeyance, but it still stands well over six feet tall.

There is a part of Maka's brain that recognizes the spider as real and not an illusion produced by nightmares, but a far greater part of her is frozen, stuck on a giant web in Abeyance again. She dimly registers the spider stirring to life, a small voice in her mind wondering why it hasn't killed her yet when Soul's face swims in her vision. "Move!"

His voice breaks her trance and she finds her feet, staggering back. She claps a hand over her mouth as she collides into the counter-it's unlikely that Black Star or Tsubaki will be able to see the spider, but she doesn't think that'll keep them from being cut in half by the spider's pincers.

She doesn't wait to see if the spider will follow, grabbing a misshapen pole from the floor as she runs as quietly as possible out of the confectionary. Instead of heading into one of the other buildings in the old town, Maka veers into the forest lining the remnants of Orcus Hollow, the roar of her heartbeat drowning everything else out.

The light from the moon overhead guides her path as Maka sprints between the trees; she can no longer hear the spider's clicking, but she knows it won't take long for it to find her. An exposed root sends her sprawling face-first into a tree, knocking the pole out of her hand. She tastes blood and feels something warm dripping down her knee, fingers blindly scrabbling against the tree truck as she shoves herself to her feet.

Soul is right in front of her. "What are you doing? A forest is the kind of place that thing thrives in!"

Maka meets his eyes, digging her heels into the ground. "I'm sorry."

"What-" Soul's sentence is cut off as Maka reaches out and pushes her hand into his.

Although she braced herself, she still shudders-there's nothing that could've prepared her for the wave of disorientation as Soul's thoughts surface in her mind. They shutter closed almost immediately, but his feelings don't; confusion mixed with almost-elation and a rush of nausea that's not hers sweep through them. "Are you okay?"

Maybe. A vague upsetness mixes in with the rest of his feelings. A warning would have been nice.

Guilt pricks at the back of their neck. "I know, I-"

A sudden series of clicks cause them to straighten; the clicks echo, seeming to come from everywhere, and they scramble to find the pole and swing around, back against the tree trunk. Silence envelopes the forest and stretches out tautly as they wait.

After a minute of nothing, Soul is the first to break the silence in their mind. Do we move or go?

They look down at the pole in their hand; it's misshapen from being partially melted in the fire and the end where it got broken off is only a dull point. "This won't kill it."

Soul is incredulous. We're trying to kill it? There is little other than his responses that flow from his side of their mind to hers now. I thought we were getting away.

"Do you think it's going to leave us alone because we run?" The panic she's held back in their mind trickles into their voice. "And what about that thing from last night?"

From above, a low click accompanied by a hiss sounds in their ears; they dive out of the way in time to avoid being crushed by the spider, rolling onto their back to find four pairs of scarlet eyes locked on them.

They use the pole to propel themselves to their feet, pushing themselves into a sprint. The sound of snapping pincers and branches breaking as the spider chases them is all that they hear, the rush of their heartbeat and the increasing slipperiness of the pole in their hand all that they feel.

Even with their increased strength and energy, the ache from running eventually sprouts in their calves, traveling up to their lungs.

Soul points it out first. We can't run forever.

I'm aware.

A yell escapes from them as they trip over something in the dark and nearly impale themselves on the pole; they roll on their back and catch a glimpse of bloody eyes and gnashing pincers. They shove the pole upwards on instinct, and feel it strike home.

The spider lets out an enraged hiss, and they have to scramble on their hands and knees to avoid being run through by one of the spider's legs. Pale blue blood runs from its pincers where the pole hangs precariously as it continues to hiss.

They push themselves to their feet, eyes fixed on the pole that refuses to dislodge itself from the spider, no matter how much it shakes its head.

Do you know what I'm thinking?

Soul's reply is resigned. Unfortunately.

They hesitate for another moment before plunging forward as the spider finally stops thrashing and faces them; the handle of the pole is too slick with the spider's blood to get a good grip and they narrowly avoid having their head snapped off by diving underneath the spider's belly.

They're immediately enfolded in a foul rotting odor, and they gag as they try to follow the wild circles the spider makes to chase them out from under it. They inch towards the head of the spider, arm straining as they try to grab the pole, although Soul balks from his side of their mind. No offense, but this is the exact definition of going from bad to worse.

If you have better ideas, I am all ears.

Abruptly, the spider stops moving, and there is an ominous silence for all of one second before they realize what it's going to do and lunge out of the way as the spider slams its belly on the ground.

Their ears ring as they crawl forward frantically on their knees; the pole lies less than ten feet away from them, the impact of the spider's strike having knocked it loose. Behind them is the sound of the spider rising as it recovers, a low hiss filling their ears as they reach the pole and twist around just as the spider pounces.

There's a sharp crunching noise and then the feeling of the pole traveling through something thick and glutinous. It takes a minute for them to look beyond the length of the pole and to the spider.

Its face is completely mangled, save for one eye that stares lifelessly at them, the result of the pole being driven through its pincers. The spider sags to one side, one of its legs twitching involuntarily.

They fall back from where they're kneeling, but their hands stay locked around the pole, still pushing it inwards.

You can let go.

On her side of their mind, Maka realizes that she's the one forcing them to hold on, and she eases her grip. The wall in their mind shifts, supporting her rather than shutting her out, and they rise slowly. The sound of Tsubaki and Black Star calling Maka's name echoes in the distance as they steady themselves.

Soul leaves Maka's mind, although she senses a certain reluctance in it, and her composure fractures.

"I'm sorry, I should have asked if it was okay," she whispers.

"It's fine-"

Her mind is a screaming cacophony of memory, and she moves, not away from the spider, but closer to it. "I panicked," she says in a louder voice, staring into the spider's eye. Her hands ball into fists and she aims a kicks at its body. "I thought it was going to take us back-"

"Maka, it's okay-"

She drives another kick at the spider. " What was it even doing here-"

"Maka." Soul comes close enough to touch, and she breathes finally. "It's going to be okay."

She meets his gaze. "How?"

Soul is quiet for a long moment before he speaks.

"Because we're going to join the DWMA."


	8. Interlude

Maka texts Kid from the hospital, seizing the opportunity while Spirit drives Tsubaki and Black Star home. She has surprisingly little injuries for being attacked by the spider (or feral dog, as she had told everyone else), but Soul stares at the shallow cut running down the side of her face and knows exactly how much worse it could have been.

She whispers to him that they won't be able to meet with Marie and the rest until tomorrow and he nods.

His decision echoes in his ears while the whispers replay the memory of being inside Maka's head, so close to her soul.

(Exhilaration, wholeness, hunger, disgust, and repeat.)

In light of that memory, his choice to join the DWMA seems extremely idiotic, which is why he forces himself to look at Maka. Her soul sings courage more than anything, even with the fear that's worn itself in the grooves of her mind, and it's easy to feel steady and strong when he looks at her. He will deal with the whispers if it means that Maka can feel safe.

But from some corner of his mind, the whispers sigh. Close, close, they say. So very close.

* * *

Azusa rolls her pencil back and forth between her fingers and leans back in her chair after Maka and Soul leave her office, Marie following to show them out while Stein returns to his lab. She's long since broken the habit of using them as pets, but Azusa summons a sniffer and the small, catlike shadow jumps up on her lap as she thinks.

Creatures, along with poltergeists, have always crossed the rift back and forth, but the person-thing with wings that Maka described has never crossed their radar before. She glances again at the results of her computer search through the DWMA's record of observations, which also connects with similar organizations across the world.

No record of anything supernatural with wings that wasn't demon nor monster nor witch.

It was interested in Maka. Or the ghost attached to her.

She puts down her pencil and brings up Soul's aura reading again, studying it for a long moment. Black isn't an unusual color to turn for a ghost's aura; death is traumatic, whether it is a peaceful one or not, and Soul's had been more violent than most ghosts she'd met.

But there is a restraint she senses in Soul that is strange; soul perception was what she was most skilled in, and when she looks at him, all she sees is a large blind spot blocking out most of his soul.

She supposes that Soul's time in Abeyance could be the cause, but that is another entirely different variable she isn't sure how to factor in; questions about him turning into a poltergeist aside, Soul didn't have much to share other than he had been in some sort of unconscious state for most of it. Even after their third meeting, she could come to no conclusions about Soul-the black in his aura reading had spread, continuing to throttle the blue it originally had been, but that could be the result of many things, and the unknown is not something she works well with.

Marie peers through the doorway. "They'll be starting with Kid the day after tomorrow," she says. "I can take care of registering them."

Azusa nods without saying anything, and Marie frowns, entering the office. "You're still unsure about this."

"I have reservations," she admits as Marie sits in the chair across from her. "But they're the same I had with Kilik and the twins."

"And they're doing just fine on their own."

"They've only been on three missions on their own."

"To which I can point out the difficulty of those missions," Marie says with a wry smile. "But I'm sure you already have an answer for that."

"Immediate precognition does have that advantage, though it doesn't help when the other person in the conversation isn't similarly gifted."

"Not knowing the future is an uncomfortable feeling," Marie says, echoing her thoughts from earlier. "But I try to remember it works out for most of the world when I start to feel that way."

Azusa turns her attention back to the screen. "That is not a very effective form of comfort."

"No," Marie agrees, rising. "But it is reality."

* * *

Arachne is livid, and Medusa is delighted.

She does little to hide her smile as she strokes the head of her familiar lazily and watches from her throne of snake bones while Arachne rages.

"My youngest spider," she says through clenched teeth. "I raised it myself, how dare they take my youngest child?"

"Do you know who it was?" Medusa asks as she examines her fingernails.

"My children's vision does not extend back from Earth, you know that," she bites off in a low hiss. She jabs an accusing finger at her. "But it is your fault this happened."

Medusa speaks as if Arachne hadn't spoken. "My guess is that it was one of the humans spying on us," she says, picking up the glass from the stand next to her. It doesn't soothe her soul hunger, but she's developed a liking for it. "Or maybe it was the one you're looking for."

"I want you to bring my other two back," Arachne says in a cold voice. "Tell Crona to bring them back."

She takes a sip from her drink before answering Arachne. "Crona is in the middle of a far more interesting experiment."

Fury builds quietly in Arachne; it's a fascinating thing to see. "And that would be?"

"Ripping open the rift."

Surprise overrides her anger temporarily. "How?"

Medusa taps her lips with her finger. "A secret you unfortunately are not privy to," she says. "Even with my modifications, Crona will not be finished for some time, however. And by then it may be too late for your other spiders."

Arachne may not be as clever as Medusa, but she catches on. "What do you want?"

"Help," Medusa replies. "Release your demon."

She only watches with interest as Arachne's webs bind around her throat. Arachne's mouth is spread in a snarl. "This is the only reason you asked for my spiders."

Medusa only smiles. "You would truly abandon your own children?"

When Arachne's webs fall away, she knows she has her answer.


	9. Ambedo

Noun; a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details.

* * *

End of January

* * *

Maka's pencil dangles precariously from her fingertips as the drone of her teacher nurses a drowsy kind of warmth behind her eyes. She blinks rapidly, but it doesn't keep her eyelids from slipping closed, and she feels the pencil slip further from her grasp.

She starts awake, head snapping up, and she sees the pencil fall from her fingers; it flips once in mid-air before stopping abruptly a couple inches from the ground. It takes biting her lip to not speak, though she shoots a look at Soul. He lifts a hand, and she fights to keep the amusement from showing on her face, snatching the pencil before anyone can see.

Ten minutes later, when the bell rings, her head is tipping forward again, and it takes several shakes of her head to chase off the sleepiness clouding her mind. Soul waits by her desk as she packs up her things; after the spider attack last month, he changed his clothes to something other than the garish yellow and red combination, although the black hoodie and matching jeans remind Maka of a shroud.

"You're sleep-deprived," he says as they walk out into an empty hallway and a yawn bubbles on her lips.

"Well-spotted." Another yawn robs her retort of her intended sarcasm.

"And this is only us only going out to meet Kid three times a week," he continues. A light dusting of snow covers the tops of the school buildings and the roofs of the cars in the school parking lot while clouds overhead promise more snow later. "What's going to happen when we're going out every night?"

"I'll manage."

"Managing is not the same thing as a solution."

"It's for less than a year," she says as they weave through the school parking lot. "When the DWMA closes the rift in October, we'll be able to slow down."

Snow crunches behind Maka. "Close the rift?"

She whirls around, recognizing Black Star just in time to keep her fist from nearly smashing in his nose. "Do you know how close you were to getting your face broken?"

"Hello to you too," he says. "What does 'close the rift' mean?"

"Nothing, just sounding out a sentence for an essay." Maka pulls her car keys from her pocket.

The look in his eyes remains unconvinced. "It looked like you were talking to someone."

"Well, that's concentrating for you." They reach the truck and she unlocks the driver's door. "Do you want a ride to the diner?"

"Not today." Black Star's suspicion drops temporarily and he bounces with a barely contained glee. "Sid is taking me to the DMV for my driving test, so in a few hours, I will be a fully qualified driver."

Maka high fives his raised hand. "I would wish you luck, but I know what you'd say to that."

"No need for luck when you've got hard work riding behind you." Black Star pumps his fist and smoothes back his hair, which is dyed a relatively mellow violet with a greyish hue. "You up for milkshake celebrations at seven?"

She wavers in answering, and sees Black Star's expression fall. "It's not that I don't want to," Maka says quickly. "AP testing is coming and I'm already swamped."

"It's not even February." The doubt on his face is back. "You can't even spare an hour for dinner?"

"I'm taking four AP classes." She tries to stick to truth as much as possible to keep the lies from piling up. "We're in finals mode all year long."

Persistence continues to be Black Star's strong suit. "Then why don't I bring the milkshakes over?"

There's a knowing look in his eyes the longer it takes Maka to answer.

"I'm going to be out," she says finally.

Hurt now joins the skepticism on his face. "Doing what?"

"I can't tell you." Lies taste rancid on her tongue, and it's too much of a risk to start telling stories to one of the people who can go to her father. "I do promise it's nothing close to whatever you're thinking."

"And what should I be thinking?" he shoots back. "After last year, I'd thought things were finally changing, and it's like you're half-gone again."

Patience is not something Maka has in spades lately, but she makes an effort to hold onto the little she has, especially since she knows he's not wrong. "Being away is not something I'm doing on purpose, like last time," she says. Any excuse she thinks of falls flat. "It's out of necessity."

"And what kind of necessity is that?" He crosses his arms. "Or is that something else you can't tell me?"

She hedges for a moment before sighing. "It is."

"Fine." A sharp ring sounds from Black Star's pocket, and he begins to move away. "That's probably Sid."

"I'm free tomorrow after school," she offers.

"Sure." Black Star gives her a wave without looking at Maka. "See you tomorrow."

Maka watches him walk away, feeling Soul move next to her. She waits for his commentary, but instead a soft coolness nestles in the palm of her hand, and he says, "Not telling the truth doesn't make you a bad friend."

"Thanks." She smiles and closes her hand against the feeling but sighs again as she opens the truck door. "Doesn't keep me from feeling like one though."

* * *

Spirit stops Maka on her way out of the house. "You've got another postcard."

She lets her hand drop from the door knob; news of her mother is simultaneously repulsive and tempting, though it's the latter that wins out everytime.

He waggles a postcard and an open envelope at Maka as she enters the living room. "I got a letter too, so don't feel too special." His voice is teasing in that way he has when he's trying to hide his real feelings. "She wants to know if I'm hiding cards from you."

"Well, you can let her know I got them," she mutters. Although she had given Tsubaki's words real thought after the spider attack, the closest she had gotten to acting on them was telling Spirit about the first postcard. "She has no right to be accusing you of that."

"I think it would make her happy if you told her that."

"Why are you okay with this?" Maka blurts out. "She left us. You should be angry."

Spirit rubs his chin before he answers Maka, lowering the hand holding the postcard. "I'm not okay with it," he says finally. "I don't think your mother is going about this the right way either, but then again, I'm not sure if there is a right way to act about something like this."

"Anger eats away at the good things," he says after another moment. "I think your mother got caught up in that feeling, some of it for good reason," he admits. "But you are my good thing in this and your mother is trying to make amends so I-"

The rest of Spirit's words are cut off as Maka crushes him in a hug.

She fights the stinging in her eyes and tucks her head in the crook of his neck as he returns her hug, though she still has to wipe furiously at her eyes when she steps back and takes the postcard from Spirit's hand.

"Thank you for telling me about the card." She looks down at the postcard, a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it this time. "Though I still don't know what to say."

"Hello and thank you are good places to start." Spirit pats her shoulder.

"Thanks."

"See?" he says. "You've got it down already."

She rolls her eyes, though she smiles, and gives him another hug. "I've got to get going, but I'll be back by eleven."

"Say hello to Black Star and Tsubaki for me."

A prickle of guilt gnaws in Maka's stomach at that, but she nods. The lies are in place for a reason, she reminds herself, though it does nothing to lessen the feeling. "I will."

* * *

"Do you mind that I'm there?"

Maka glances to Soul. "There for what?"

"For conversations like with your dad and with Black Star." It makes him squirm to bring up, but as someone who becomes uncomfortable with confiding in others even in imaginary conversations, he needs to know.

Maka, however, seems surprised. "You always find yourself in another part of the room or house anyhow."

"Yeah, but I can still hear things," he says, wiggling his hand. "Feel things."

"I know there's not much of a choice in it, but I trust you," she says after a moment. "Which is a choice."

Guilt makes it impossible to meet her eyes. "I trust you too."

"Glad we're on the same page," she says lightly. "Considering we're going to be in each other's head every night till Halloween."

He makes a noise of agreement at that, and they fall into a gentle kind of silence. The falling snow mixed with the setting sun throws the world into a gauzy light, giving it a fragility that looks like it can be shattered with a single blow.

It's the same way he feels, cracked to the point of fracturing irreparably. His fingers tap an impatient beat against the car seat (or they would have if he were alive, he just gets met with the feeling of going through something solid now.) Training to become a reaper necessitates a closeness the whispers would have kept him away from, a closeness that is as natural as it is frustrating.

It's what their relationship could be if there wasn't something fundamentally wrong with him; he no longer wracks his mind over whether it stems from some innate flaw or the fact he's supposed to be a poltergeist by now-the whispers are there and they haunt him until he imagines giving in, but then the self-disgust kicks in and he finds his mind again.

He cannot bear being looked at as remotely human when his thoughts tell him otherwise.

Soul imagines sucking in a breath, the air filling his lungs, and letting it out slowly. When he thinks about the whispers, he begins to spiral like some morbid self-fulfilling prophecy, and he refuses to let that happen today.

"Are you okay?" Maka's words are hesitant as she looks over at Soul.

"I'm fine." Looking at Maka directly is a mistake; she's mesmerizing in all of the subtle ways, like in the way her nose scrunches when she asks a question and how the tips of her hair catch the fading light.

"You're somewhere else, even when you're here sometimes," she says, pushing a stray hair back in place. "It's been happening for months." She's not accusatory, and he couldn't deny the truth even if she were. Her hand wavers, as if to reach out. "I still mean it when I asked you to stay for everything."

(This is the part where he trusts her words, vomits his mind, and prays she doesn't run screaming from the mess.)

Soul nods. "All right."

Their gaze lingers on each other, the closest he'll get to touching her now that they're training to be a reaper and direct possession is strictly prohibited by the DWMA.

Maka looks back to the road. Her hand returns to the steering wheel. "Okay."

* * *

Kid and Marie are waiting for them at the edge of the forest clearing that has been their meeting place with Kid for the past month; shadowing Kid on his runs throughout his territory as a reaper (the most southern point being Moricio, they'd learned) was little more than learning how to possess weapons by possessing one of Kid's pistols over and over for Soul, though learning to compact his soul into something that tiny had been a challenge in the beginning.

Meanwhile, Maka had learned to discern between ghosts and poltergeists, particularly when the poltergeist was in the early stages of decay, and use her perception abilities to determine where groups of poltergeists may be concentrated.

"After they lose so much of their soul, they stop acting rationally and become unusually paranoid," Kid had told them. "It's easiest to reap them then, but that's also when they start banding together."

The paranoia bit hadn't been comforting for Soul to hear.

"How are you feeling?" Marie steps forward, rubbing her hands together and pulling her coat closer to her. The snow has stopped falling, but there is a thick layering of snow on the ground.

"Ready," Maka answers while Soul stays quiet. If he had a body, he'd be ready to throw up, which he supposes it's a blessing he doesn't. "What do we need to do?"

Marie smiles. "Your month of observation is up and Kid says that you're identifying areas of poltergeist activity on your own now," she says. "Which tells me you're ready to move forward."

Maka blinks. "On our own?" The confidence on her face falters slightly. "What about the spiders and thing we saw?"

"There's been no sign of any more spiders nor whatever you saw," Marie says. "There's never complete certainty, but with how small Orcus Hollow is, it's likely the creature moved on."

"And there's only so much you learn by seeing," Kid answers, stepping forward. "Experience is the best teacher, although I will still be nearby."

"If you need an extra few days, that's perfectly fine," Marie adds.

"No, I'm ready," Maka says quickly. She glances at Soul. "Are you?"

Until now, Soul's decision to become a reaper hadn't felt real, too far away to picture. He sees it very clearly now.

Distantly, he feels himself nod. "Yes."

"Excellent." Marie claps her hands together once, and gestures to the familiar, dilapidated shack behind them. "Shall we?"

A pair of hands grabs his shoulders as Maka moves ahead with Kid and Marie. Patti's face pops into view. "So how do you feel about finally becoming one of us?"

"Absolutely thrilled." Soul shrugs out from Liz's grasp and turns to face the two ghosts.

"You might do all right if you put your mind to it," Liz says, eyeing him in the same way that she did when they first met. "Just don't choose a lame weapon or I'll be embarrassed when we double team."

"Is that your way of giving me your stamp of approval?"

"Tentative approval," Patti says, pushing in. "Gotta pick your weapon first before you're official."

"Perfect," he says as Maka pokes her head out of the shack.

"You coming?" she calls.

"On our way," Liz answers.

"Reaping won't be that hard," she says as they head towards the shack. "The poltergeists and other creatures around here aren't as bad as they are in some places."

The inside of the shack is rather crowded with three people in it; Soul shrinks back from Maka, who comes dangerously close to him as Kid opens the door that rests in the wall on the other side of the shack.

Soul is still disturbed by the darkness that the door opens to, but not as much as the first night that he saw it. The long, dark hallway is a hallmark of portals to the DWMA, Kid had explained-it's the same as the one that Soul and Maka had traveled down in Moricio and how traveling reapers are able to move from one side of the country to the other within the day.

They emerge in a long hallway with striped carpet and doors to portals marked with various cities and countries; after the surreal appearance of the Death Room, it had surprised Soul that the rest of the DWMA resembled an ordinary office the first time Kid had taken them to headquarters, but it's not the strangest thing he's seen since he died. Marie nods at the person passing by and leads them down to the elevator at the end of the hallway.

The elevator is the only thing other than the Death Room that borders on fantastical; completely made of glass and at least twenty feet wide and twice as tall, the walls of the elevator are lined in rows of open mission briefings with details of monsters, demons, and particularly dense hordes of poltergeists that the local reaper cannot handle on their own. Soul watches as the mission three rows above his head disappears-how people on different floors of the DWMA manage to take the same elevator at the same time is still a mystery to him.

Meanwhile, Marie gives a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness, the mission board hasn't been touched in over two weeks."

Maka looks at Marie. "Can't you tell reapers where to go?"

She shakes her head. "For one, we don't have many traveling reapers anymore. Most of the reapers who take open missions are reapers who have extra time, which is also scarce these days."

"Secondly, the DWMA is leaderless," she says as the elevator opens. "We have teams in charge of different regions that meet to make decisions on urgent issues, but for an organization like ours, it's inconvenient to use a hierarchy."

A large lobby stretches out in front of them; at the far end of the room lies a pair of double doors and a sign above them labeled "Weapons Registry." Next to the doors is a long counter where sits an old woman with the longest fingernails Soul has ever seen.

Marie pauses for an instant, and Soul watches her smile widen to the border of fake as she straightens her shoulders. "Let's go."

"Miss Maud." Marie's voice is filled with a false cheeriness as she approaches the counter, the rest of the group stopping a few feet behind her. "Having a good night so far?"

The old woman fixes the group with an unimpressed gaze. "Been stuck down here all day so I don't know how good it is." Her voice is surprisingly smooth for a woman whose skin resembles an accordion.

"A shame." Marie's tone holds none of the sympathy it has when she's actually sorry. "But I've got a new reaping pair that might liven up your night," she says brightly.

Miss Maud raises an overly plucked eyebrow. "Filing paperwork is livening up my night?"

Next to Soul, Patti whispers, "Miss Maud is in charge of all the weapons at the DWMA, if she doesn't like you, then you don't get one."

On his other side, Maka frowns. "That doesn't seem very fair."

"She was the abilities perception recruiter for the DWMA for the last forty years," murmurs Kid. "They started waning about eight years ago so she got placed in charge of weaponry."

"But my hearing didn't." Miss Maud's stare is more steely than Azusa's and she lets the huge pile of papers in her hands fall onto the counter with a plop. "I'm tempted to take away those guns of yours."

"Weapons are the property of the reaper until they are no longer active," Marie says hastily. "Kid meant no harm, he was only explaining who you are to our new reaper."

Kid nods rapidly.

"Uh-huh." Miss Maud turns her eye to Maka and then to Soul. "Odd pair you make."

"It's the ghost thing." He can't stop himself from speaking-sarcasm has never been something he can resist.

The scowl on Miss Maud's face grows deeper, but Marie intervenes before the old woman can answer him. "Unlikely pairs often make the best reapers."

"Hmph." Miss Maud sniffs. "Well, the night isn't getting younger."

"And that is as close to the stamp of approval that you're gonna get," says Liz as Miss Maud shuffles away and disappears into a door behind the counter.

Maka scoffs. "She couldn't really say no."

"She could." Marie places her elbows on the counter and rests her face in her hands. "Back when more reapers were around, but I don't think she'd hesitate much now."

"Try to make it quick." The door closes with a groan as Miss Maud returns, holding a large key ring that holds at least twenty keys. She hands the ring of keys to Marie, but doesn't let them go. "And remember, I go back and check that everything is in its place when you leave."

Marie's smile widens ever so slightly. "I would never forget it."

Miss Maud looks at her for another moment before releasing her hold on the keys. Marie gives her another smile, more genuine this time, and turns to Soul and Maka. "Let's go."

Soul gives the old woman one last look as he and Maka follow Marie to the weaponry doors. There's something he likes about her, despite her mannerisms.

"You pretty much have your choice of all the weaponry," Marie says as she unlocks the doors. "But I would recommend against picking something you don't know how to use."

She holds a door open for them. "I'll give you some time to decide and check in with you in a bit."

The door falls shut as they step into the room and take in the weaponry. Every kind of weapon Soul has heard of and plenty that he doesn't recognize is lined on tables and cabinets in a room that stretches out at least half a football field long.

Maka takes a step forward, speaking finally. "This is a...lot."

"That is a word for it." He examines a pair of spiked gauntlets on the table closest to him. "Where do we even start?"

"I guess I can start with this side and you can start with the other?" Maka suggests. "We speak up if we find anything?"

"Fine by me."

They work in silence for several minutes; Soul drifts up and down the rows slowly, examining each weapon and imagining how he would condense his soul into it. There are none he finds that he can accept possessing on a nightly basis; weapon possession is not the same as human possession-it is inherently cold and he exists in a small, dark space that is highly uncomfortable to be in. Meanwhile, Maka had been warm-he felt grounded in her mind and could feel the ripple of her laughter when she laughed-

He cuts himself off, despite protest from his mind that doesn't come from the whispers, a fact that he doesn't care to contemplate.

"How am I supposed to fit my soul in these?" he asks, gesturing to a pair of hook swords. They're from China and several hundred years old, according to the label above them.

Maka puts down the crossbow she was holding, and heads towards Soul, raising her eyebrow when she sees the hook swords. "I guess you can just split your soul in two."

He grimaces. "Sounds pleasant."

"I'm sure Stein can patch you back up."

"I don't think he's ever been to medical school."

Her shoulders move in a half-shrug. "My dad said he tried to perform dissection on him once."

They start going up and down the rows again. Soul lingers at a fire lance, but eventually he moves on, passing on every weapon after that. When they come to the last of the tables, Maka turns to him. "What about this one?"

She holds up what looks like a long hollow metal tube with a small rounded blade attached at the end.

"What is that?"

"Scissors," she says, reading the label. "They were used by Roman gladiators, apparently." She inserts her arm in the tube and waves it around in front of his face. "I think this is how you use it."

He leans away. "I think I'll pass."

A smile bubbles on her lips. "Fine." She puts down the scissors and steps over to the cabinets, pointing to an ancient looking sword with an ornate handle. "How about this?"

"There is no way I'm letting my soul inhabit this thing," Soul scoffs, eyeing the sword. He doesn't see what makes it worth the name Excalibur. "It's old and rusty and has no sense of style at all."

"We're almost through the whole room." Maka frowns. "You weren't this choosy and you didn't complain this much when you possessed me."

He has never been so intensely grateful for the fact he is dead and therefore cannot blush. "Firstly, those were life-and-death situations," he says, keeping his head down to muffle his words since his voice fails to hide anything from Maka these days. "And secondly, that would have made me an asshole."

"This is coming from the same person who called my ankles fat last week."

"I apologized," he reminds her. The way he brushes past Maka as they continue down the wall of cabinets, not quite touching but well past the line of too close, is something he should not be doing, had expressly forbidden himself from doing, but the whispers are only a low buzz and he has never been good at listening to himself, the thrum of Maka's soul calling to him like a song.

"Only once." She rolls her eyes but a smile curves her lips.

"I'm sorry again." Soul pretends not to notice how she leans in ever so slightly towards him and turns his attention back to the weapons resting on hooks behind the glass. "Your body is nice," he mumbles in a low whisper.

"My body is nice?"

His head snaps up and the life he only recently remembers flashes before Soul's eyes; he hadn't meant for Maka to hear him and by the way surprise traces her face, eyebrows lifting into her bangs, she hadn't expected for him to say anything like that.

Denial will bury him; confession most likely will as well but perhaps she'll take some small token of mercy on him. "Yes," he admits quickly. "It's-" Soul searches for a word that will not incite his early return to the afterlife. "Substantial."

"Substantial," she repeats, eyebrows disappearing further in her hair.

"Yes." His mind, always whispering and murmuring in his ear even when he doesn't want to hear anything, is silent. His hands gesture limply to Maka and then to him. "Solid."

Maka's face, usually so readable, is masked. "And that is what makes it nice?"

"Only one of reasons." His tongue moves faster than his brain for once and regret descends upon him like a guillotine. Maka's mouth quirks in confusion while her eyes light with curiosity; nothing can be done to salvage the sinking ship he has launched himself on and the only thing he can do is sink along with it. It takes all of his willpower to not fade into nothingness as he mutters, "There are many things that make your body nice."

She does not answer immediately and when she does, Maka is staring down at the weapon label in front of her. "I see." Her voice has turned squeaky for some reason and her face almost seems flushed but he knows it's only the shadows cast by the lamps lining the walls. She clears her throat. "Mind sharing one?"

At this, his mind switches back on and floods Soul with dozens of suggestions. There is not one among them he can deliver along the lines of strictly platonic feelings and all he can do is gape blankly, mouth ajar.

Maka moves without warning, pushing her face so close that he is unable to hide from her gaze. "Well?" she asks.

Being able to now pick out every tiny fleck of gold in her eyes renders Soul frozen in addition to his sudden muteness; he's left his body a long time ago but the memory of his heartbeat roars loudly in his ears.

Finding his voice is a simple task that takes him too long to do. "I-"

"Hey there!" Marie pokes her head into the room. "Decided yet?"

Maka jumps, pulling away. "We're just narrowing it down from the ones we picked."

"Another few minutes then," Marie says, rapping her fingers against the door. "I should be done with the paperwork by then."

They both hear the hidden plea in her voice. "We'll be ready by then," Maka assures her.

She twists back to Soul, keeping space between them, which leaves him with a vague sense of disappointment. "Well?"

"There's nothing good here," he says, lifting his hands in exasperation. "Are you comfortable using anything we've seen?"

Maka cedes the point with a reluctant tilt of her head. "How about a gun like Liz and Patti then?" she says. "You're used to it and I know how to use that."

He wrinkles his nose. "Used to doesn't mean I'm okay with it."

"What's wrong with a gun?"

"They're cold and small," he says, eyes on the collection of spears in front of him. "And I don't feel human then."

There's a pause from Maka. "So a bigger piece of metal then."

He's grateful she doesn't mention the latter part. "Exactly."

"Something like this?"

The scythe Maka points to is less flashy than other weapons, but it's eye-catching in its own way. Its blade smiles at them in a jagged grin of red and black, handle entirely made of silver. A red eye with a pupil of ebony stares at them blankly from the juncture where the blade and handle meets.

He studies it for a moment. "The eye is questionable, but it's better than anything we've seen so far."

Maka opens the cabinet, taking the scythe and hefting it in her hands. "It's not too heavy either," she says, spinning it once. "I used to be a baton twirler in middle school and freshman year before I got kicked off the team."

"What got you kicked off?"

"Inappropriate use of my baton on a bully," she answers.

He snorts. "So you've got fighting experience, too."

"You've heard what my dad has said about my record," she says. She holds out the scythe. "Big enough for you?"

Soul's fingers skim over the surface of the blade, his reflection staring up at him. His eyes are the same shade as the blade. "Let's give it a try."

* * *

Maka stands in front of the shack, scythe in hand. She fans herself, hot despite the cool breeze flowing through the forest. The dark uniform the DWMA gave her is thick, and promises to be a nightmare to wear in the summer. "One more time."

Soul nods, disappearing in a flash. His reflection appears in the middle of the blade. "Am I wearing clothes this time?"

A blush crawls up her face. "Nothing yet."

Patti throws back her head in laughter while Liz says, "It takes a while to get weapon possession right."

He scowls at them. "Why didn't this happen before?"

She shrugs. "You weren't using your bond then."

"I want to file a complaint." Nothing shows below his shoulders, but Soul still had panicked and separated from the scythe when he first possessed it at the armory-it'd taken a lot of coaxing from Maka to get him to try again.

"Miss Maud doesn't take those."

"It's getting close to nine." Kid has his hood over his head, which he put up after the old woman had called out his comment. "We should get going."

He hands Maka something that looks like a watch, though she sees a small virtual map on its face when she looks at it. "This is a layout of Orcus Hollow, from the town limits to Moricio."

"Push this one after you reap a poltergeist," he says, tapping a black button on the right side of the map. "It lets the DWMA know that there is an area that should be cleansed and purified." He points to a tiny silver button on the map's side. "If you push this, it'll send a distress signal to myself, Marie, and Azusa."

She looks up. "Are you leaving now?"

"We'll stay for the rest of the week to make sure that you're settling in," Kid answers. He withdraws his pistols and Liz and Patti move in sync, vanishing as they reach him. "We'll take this side of the forest," he says, gesturing to one side of the forest. "You can take the other and we'll meet back here in an hour."

She nods; previous runs with Kid had shown that covering all of Orcus Hollow and the surrounding forest in one night is impossible, but patrolling sections of the area in a constant cycle keeps the poltergeist population under control.

The forest hums with a subdued sense of life as Maka walks along one of the trails that are a secret to everyone except natives of Orcus Hollow. There's no sign of the dark, glowing outlines of poltergeists nor of any of the other creatures that cross over from the rift.

"It's quiet." Soul echoes her thoughts as the trail begins to circle back.

"A rare thing." Their bond is stronger than it is when they're separate, strong enough to send thoughts to each other. However, it's not as tangible or immersive as when he possesses her; it leaves Maka with a restless feeling, like something is missing.

She doesn't mention it, choosing instead to quicken her pace. The snow from earlier has piled up in small drifts as it continues to fall in soft swirls around them, and the sounds from earlier when they were walking up the trail have faded, drowning the forest in an unearthly feeling.

It's not an uncommon sensation, considering their business, and she ignores it until a low groan sounds through the forest.

Maka freezes, head snapping to where the groan came from. Her eyes scan the brush and the spaces between the trees carefully, and she eases forward slowly.

Anything?

She shakes her head, knowing Soul will see her. There are no signs of a poltergeist anywhere, but she's seen the creatures that cross over from Abeyance: ghost-white scorpions the length of her arm, mice made of bones and little else with blood red eyes, poisonous frogs that burrow under the earth and spit globs of venom.

This noise doesn't sound like any creature Maka has encountered, but she still moves cautiously as she edges off the path and into the trees. Briefly, the thought to call Kid crosses her mind, but she dismisses it quickly.

Whatever is out there groans again, closer this time. It doesn't sound angry or defensive, but like the creature that's making it is in pain. Holding the scythe to her side, Maka picks her way through the forest, the groaning becoming more frequent and louder until the trees give way to a large clearing.

Her eyes scan the area, but Soul is the first to see it. "There."

She looks to where he points, and feels her mouth fall open. "Oh."

With the pitch-black mushrooms sticking out of its back and sides, part of its rib peeking through its skin, and bone-white antlers arcing towards the moon, it's obvious the giant moose is not one of the living.

The beast is at least ten feet tall and twice as long; it would be close to impossible to take down on her own, but it looks like something else beat Maka to the punch. She covers her mouth with her sleeve as she approaches the beast, where it lies on its side with its stomach splayed open.

The moose croons mournfully at the sound of her footsteps, but it doesn't attempt to defend itself or run away, moving its head to gaze at Maka. She stops in her tracks, swallowing hard. The other creatures from Abeyance always had a hateful stare that persisted even after Kid killed them, but the moose has a startlingly gentle look in its eyes.

She lowers the scythe, stepping back and studying the moose's wound without examining what's oozing out of the moose too thoroughly. Its fur is the color of dried blood and an inky liquid drips from the edges of its ripped flesh. It has a foul and familiar odor to it that turns Maka's stomach.

"Not all of the creatures that cross over from Abeyance are naturally malevolent." Kid's voice makes her jump. He enters the clearing from the same place that Maka came. "I sensed the creature as I was returning to the shack," he says to her unasked question. He looks at it with a tinge of regret. "It's a shame."

She tilts her head at his comment. "You've never said that about any of the other monsters."

"Not all the scientists at the DWMA agree, but some believe Abeyance used to have life of its own before the witches took over," Kid answers, eyes still on the moose. "The witches' presence changed these creatures, but they're not like the other things that come across the rift."

"Seems like one of those other things got to it." Maka points to the black substance trickling from the edges of the moose's wound.

Kid's eyebrows furrow at that and he takes out a small vial from his cloak and collects a couple drops of the liquid, capping it carefully. Stowing it back in his pocket, they stare at the moose in silence-it's long since stopped groaning and its breathing is labored, although its eyes still crackle with life.

Finally, Kid speaks. "Can you do it?"

She doesn't have to ask him what he means.

Maka's finger tap against the scythe's handle. Are you okay with it?

I am. Soul's reply is immediate. Are you?

Maka meets the moose's eyes; its gaze is starless with the kind of darkness she has never feared.

"Yes," she says, stepping closer. "I can."


	10. Macabre

Adjective; disturbing and horrifying because of depiction of death and injury.

* * *

Late March

* * *

Maka is easing the door closed when Spirit calls from the living room.

She pulls her sleeve down to hide the cut a particularly violent poltergeist had given her at the end of her patrol, checks to make sure her uniform isn't peeking out from her bag, and shoves the scythe behind her back as she enters the living room. "I thought you had gone to bed already."

"Nearly," Spirit replies, putting down the crossword puzzle in his hands. "I like to make sure you're home before I do, though."

"I'm always home before eleven." She tries not to squirm as Spirit looks up at her. Marie had assured her that the scythe was hidden from those without psychic abilities by a cloaking shield, but she still hates having to test the theory out.

"Study sessions cutting it mighty close." Spirit speaks in the purposely casual way he adopts when he is fishing for information. "I always thought you liked studying alone."

"I have harder classes than I did last year." She shrugs. "More minds are better than one."

Spirit accedes her point with a grunt. "If they are the right minds, that is."

It's too easy to follow Spirit's line of thinking, and she bites back her laugh. "Do you think I'm seeing someone instead of going out to study?"

His eyes narrow suspiciously. "Are you confessing?"

"No point in confessing to a crime I didn't commit." The contrast between how her father thinks Maka is spending her time and how she is really spending her nights is absurd to the point of hilarity.

"There is nothing wrong with seeing someone." Spirit is in the coaxing good cop role of this interrogation now, though his words seem to physically pain him. "I do insist on meeting-"

"I told you about Hiro, didn't I?" Maka interrupts. "Why wouldn't I tell you if I was seeing someone else?"

"You did." Spirit's voice is slightly, albeit grudgingly, mollified. "And it ended in a disaster."

"It did," she agrees, although she is sure the disaster she's thinking of and the disaster Spirit is thinking of are in entirely different spheres. "Your point?"

"My point is that people, particularly boys," he says, emphasizing the last word, "Are rarely ready for a serious relationship at this age."

"Duly noted." She rolls her eyes so she can appear properly sullen. "Is there anything else I should be warned about?"

"Triply noted, I hope." Spirit looks as appeased as he's going to be. "Another two people were found in Moricio looking like the other victims in our investigation." His expression sobers. "The whole city is on alert so avoid going into Moricio for a while."

"Right." Maka and Kid often trade off on who patrols Moricio-it's her turn this week. "Any leads so far?"

He shakes his head. "It looks like this some other substance is killing them instead of acid, though we have no idea what it is, just that it's some kind of gunk that eats up the body."

"Sounds pleasant," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I'm heading up."

Spirit picks up his crossword. "Oh, and you also got a call."

Maka's heart rate picks up suddenly and very quickly. "Who?"

"Tsubaki," he says, oblivious to the change in her demeanor. "She tried calling you on your cell phone, but couldn't reach you." He looks up. "You must have been too buried in your study session to notice."

"Vibrate mode is the new silent mode."

He snorts, going back to the crossword. "Ten-letter word for supernatural entity?"

Maka almost laughs as she hovers on the bottom stair. "Apparition."

"You lied to him, technically," Soul says as she falls face forward onto her bed.

"How do you figure?" Maka doesn't move from her spot. Reaping is exhausting on a level she never imagined, and after two months of being on her own, there isn't a part of her that doesn't ache.

"I am dead, but I am a boy."

She lets out a groan. "Shut up."

Soul's voice is filled with an amusement that she hasn't heard in it for a long time. "You could have at least introduced me."

She flings her pillow in the direction of his voice without looking up. "I will end you."

His laugh is right above her head as she feels the pillow drop next to her. "Not to disappoint you, but I'm already dead."

"It is a disappointment." She rolls on her back and finds herself staring up at Soul. In the half-light of the room, his skin is nearly the color it was when he was alive. "Being dead, not being unable to be ended," she clarifies.

"They're the same thing." The minutely lopsided tilt to his smile tells her that it's sincere, and that he's present in a way that is achingly absent when they go out reaping.

"Not really." His translucence is masked, too; he looks solid, and her palms tingle with the desire to find out if it's true, even though she knows otherwise. She knows his touch through her skin, but it's not the same and it's not enough. "There's a difference."

"If you say so." He shifts away too quickly; the disappointment on her tongue is a different kind than the one they're talking about. "Reality stays the same, either way."

She kicks off her shoes in response and worms her way under the blankets. The exhaustion that was pulling down on her eyelids has evaporated, and she stares holes into the ceiling. It's grating that she only gets pieces of closeness, fragments of warmth between miles of cold, but she has no right to complain when she did the same thing to him. Trust is uncomfortable, ill-fitting, and borders on the side of nauseating to contemplate, but Soul jumped with her in Abeyance, stayed when she asked, even if it's not in the way she wishes for, so she owes him that much.

Maka swallows her questions and screws her eyes shut. She owes herself that much.

* * *

Tsubaki's face pops up after the first ring in the morning. It's hard to make out much with the slightly grainy quality of the video, but she thinks the shadows under her eyes have improved since they video chatted last week.

"Sorry I didn't pick up yesterday," she says apologetically. "I've been trying to get my sleep schedule back on track."

Maka waves away her words. "It's good that you're taking care of yourself." She pauses, trying to decide how to phrase her next question. "How is everything else?" she asks finally.

The smile on Tsubaki's face tells her it's too easy for Tsubaki to see through to her actual question. "The dreams haven't stopped," she says. "But they don't feel as impossible to deal with."

"I've also been trying to get out more," she adds. "I joined the pottery club."

"And how is that?"

"Messy." Tsubaki holds up grey-stained hands to the camera. "But it's peaceful and lets me focus on something else other than my feelings."

"A hard thing to accomplish."

"And you?" Tsubaki leans forward. "How is the end of spring break treating you?"

"It went much too fast," Maka says, rubbing the back of her neck. Catching up on the sleep she's been missing over the break was nice, though she knows her body is in for a rude awakening on Monday. "I wish your break had been this week, instead of next week."

"We'll catch up after school at Sid's," Tsubaki assures her. "Though Black Star says you've been busy with studying lately."

She groans. "He always goes complaining to you."

"It's his way of showing concern." There's a creak from Tsubaki's side of the screen as she scoots closer. "But we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"There isn't much to talk about, I'm just busy." It's truth by vagueness, although it doesn't make Maka feel any better than if she lied.

"All right." Tsubaki doesn't push. "Did you decide anything about your mom?"

"I didn't answer the first postcard," Maka says after a beat. "But I did answer the second."

"And?"

"I got a return to sender notice," she sighs. "Apparently, she moved."

Tsubaki sits back. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Maka shakes her head. "I don't know what I would have done if she replied."

"Something, presumably."

Her smile is weak. "Hopefully."

"Well, I thi-" Tsubaki breaks off, eyeing something behind Maka. "What's that?"

Maka looks behind herself. "You mean my wall?"

"No, the thing leaning on it." Tsubaki squints at the upper corner of the screen. "Is that a scythe?"

She attempts to appear casual as she glances towards the scythe, locking eyes with Soul as she does so, who hovers in complete view of the camera. "Oh, that's just a prop."

Tsubaki frowns as Soul shuffles out of the camera's range. "What for?"

"Theater," she invents.

Tsubaki's tone turns skeptical. "You're in theater?"

"Not exactly," she says, trying to choose the lie that has the least knots with the truth. "An idiot was being condescending and I may have pushed him while the theater teacher was passing by."

"Mr. Dyers was always a fan of free student labor," Tsubaki says, shaking her head. "But I thought you were past the illegal student fighting phase."

Maka shrugs, forcing a smile. "Some habits die hard."

* * *

"Want to see something interesting?" Stein peers into Azusa's office, eyes falling on Maka as he speaks. "You're here."

"Yes," says Maka awkwardly. While Stein's horn-rimmed glasses give him an owlish appearance, the way his expression sharpens unexpectedly reminds her of a hawk poised on a death dive. She nods towards the doorway. "There was a problem with a cleansing so Azusa went to take care of it."

"And you?"

"My friend can see my weapon, but not Soul." She wonders if Stein only blinks when people aren't looking. "I wanted to talk to Azusa or Marie about it."

"She's not a reaper," Stein says without pausing.

For someone who claims not to have any psychic abilities, Stein has an uncanny way of reading her mind. "Then why was she able to see the scythe?" she asks.

"Abilities like yours and the other people in the DWMA are not all or nothing." Stein takes out a flask half-filled with a viscous and dark red fluid and drains it in one go. He neither explains the flask nor looks remotely embarrassed by the odd look Maka gives him (as does Soul but Stein can't see him). "It lies on a spectrum, similar to hair and skin color."

His comment distracts Maka. "Our abilities are genetic?" she says. "I thought it had to do with the soul."

"The soul is genetic," Stein answers. "It brings up the nurture versus nature debate, which many of our members feel quite strongly about, so we avoid the topic, but it doesn't stop it from being true," he says with a shrug. "Then there's also evidence that some abilities are only triggered after death, which has its own host of taboo topics. Presumably, any single ability would require the activation of many genes to be fully functional."

"You think that's the case with my friend." Her words sound less like a statement and more like a question. "That her abilities are only partially functional."

"It's a hypothesis," Stein replies, returning the flask to his pocket. "But if your friend can't see ghosts, then she isn't a reaper."

Maka absorbs this information, wishing she'd taken back up the habit of carrying a journal with her, before giving a slow nod. "I guess that answers my question then."

He pulls a new flask, this one tiny and platinum, and holds it out to Maka. "And leaves you free to give your perspective on the liquid you and Kid found on that moose."

Maka eyes the flask with an equal amount of wariness and curiosity before taking it. "Did you find out what it was?"

"Nope." Stein sounds intrigued rather than discouraged. "There are some biological components to it so my best guess would be blood, but it's nothing like animal or human blood."

She moves the flask back and forth slowly; whatever the liquid is, it's warm enough to feel the heat through the metal. "It wouldn't be if it came across from the rift, right?"

"Not necessarily." Stein takes back the flask. "But that's not what I'm most interested at the moment." He doesn't gesture for her to follow so much as walk away without warning, but Maka is quick to scramble after him.

"And if Azusa comes back?" Soul hisses as they trail Stein into the elevator.

"We had to go out on patrol," she answers, stealing a glance at her watch. It's not exactly a lie-after Kid left her on her own, the poltergeist population had remained more or less steady, but the past two weeks seem to have produced outcroppings of poltergeists that she can hardly keep up with.

Stein doesn't ask who she's talking to. "How are you and your partner doing?"

"Increasingly dead."

Maka smiles. "We're managing."

Stein nods. "Soul is his name, correct?"

The elevator begins to move downwards. "Solomon, technically."

Soul scowls. "Was that necessary?"

With a soft ping, the elevator opens and Stein steps out, hooking a foot between the wheels of a rolling chair sitting by the elevator doors and sitting in one fluid move. "There are a few items you shouldn't touch if you value keeping your body as is so I would refrain from touching anything," he says as he rolls away.

The wall closest to Maka make it apparent that this is Stein's lab; the faces of animals and creatures from Abeyance stare at her with empty eyes as they rest in liquid-filled jars of varying sizes. She tears her gaze away to the rest of the room, which is in a state of organized chaos. Glass tubes and other lab equipment resting on rickety tables fizz and sizzle with a violet solution, while files and books lay in piles on the couch in the middle of the room and the overladen desk in the corner.

"Here." Stein has somehow already managed to roll all the way across the room to a metal table crammed next to his desk. "This is where I've been experimenting with the liquid," he says, taking out a glass dropper. "The sample was diluted with the moose's blood, which was fortunate because the glass it was in didn't start to melt until after he gave it to me." He withdraws the platinum flask as he speaks, dipping the dropper into the flask and pulling it out.

Immediately, the liquid eats a hole through the glass. A tiny fleck of the liquid falls from the dropper, caught back in the flask by Stein before it lands on the table. "It wears through the table if I don't catch it," he says, pointing to a dozen nickel-sized craters in the middle of the table, next to a line of glass beakers and metal containers that met a similar fate. He peers into the flask with one eye. "It's one of the most corrosive substances I've ever seen."

"Glad I didn't touch it," mutters Maka to Soul.

"It's sticky too." Stein tips the flask upside down, but none of the black blood comes out. He balances the flask above a Bunsen burner at the end of the table. "And it only stays a liquid around human body temperature."

Maka looks from the flask to the holes in the table. The image of the dying moose flashes across her vision. "What kind of creature has this for blood?"

"I have no idea." Stein sounds slightly elated as he caps the flask. "But I do hope it's the only one of its kind."

* * *

April

* * *

"What do you think souls taste like?"

Maka's question is an absent-minded, soft half-whisper, though the way the whispers in his head turn into knives is not. He's grateful that he's not possessing the scythe. "That's weird to ask."

"Some of them look like the swirls on an ice cream cone," she says, standing on her tiptoes to point to the tip of the partially decayed soul floating in front of them. "See?"

"Not really." He wishes they would leave the shell of a warehouse they found the poltergeist in. It revolts him to look at the soul, all that remains of a poltergeist after a reaping, though it's the hunger burning a hole through his stomach that disgusts him more.

She drops back on her feet and presses the black button on her map. "I guess I've just got food on my mind for skipping dinner."

"And morbid curiosity."

"To complement your morbid humor," Maka rejoins as she finally walks away from the poltergeist's soul. "Besides, it was just a passing thought."

He wants to claw out that passing thought, rip away the rest of the thoughts the whispers rooted in his mind, and crush them until nothing remains. Then maybe he can pretend that he's not a monster with more success.

The shift from the darkness of the warehouse to the moonlight illuminating the mouth of the alley outside detangles him from his thoughts slightly. They're in Moricio tonight, and have reaped more poltergeists in a few hours than they usually do in a whole night in Orcus Hollow. It's rubbed the little left of Soul's grip on reality raw-the city lights are burning as he trails Maka out onto the sidewalk. "How much more of the city do we have left to patrol?"

"Well, it's an hour to back home so-"

She freezes suddenly, and he narrowly avoids running through her. The hunger nearly unravels him. "What happened?"

Maka's gaze drifts upward, face scrunching like she's straining to catch wind of something. "Do you hear that?"

There is nothing but the blaring and buzzing of the city. "I don-"

Soul is cut off by a shushing noise from Maka. She drifts forward a few steps, and then she turns. "It's gone."

He tries to speak again. "What's gon-"

"There it is again!" She spins back around, eyes tracing the air before she shoots forward. "Come on!"

He scrambles after her. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know!"

Rain from earlier lingers now, turning the city streets as close to deserted as they're going to get on a Friday night; still, Maka seems to have let all caution go as her feet pound against the sidewalk. She saves herself from slipping twice by catching herself on the handle of her scythe, causing a passing couple to stare, and Soul hisses in her ear, "Be careful!"

Maka cuts down a side street, and the sounds and lights of downtown disappear as Soul continues to follow, the light from the moon swallowed up by a traversing cloud. She finally skids to a halt in front of an old church, whose faded opulence shines through in the parts of the exterior that haven't been eaten away by the weather.

"There," she says, breathless. "They're in there."

Soul shoves his thoughts into the far back of his mind as he eyes the church. A crumbling stone sign above the arching double doors names it as Santa Maria Novella, sister church to a famous basilica in Italy. A vague dread threads through him the longer he stares at the church; there is something thoroughly wrong about it that he can't place. " Who is in there?"

"I don't know." She exhales, eyes trailing up the church doors and back down again. "They felt like poltergeists, but there's something not right about them."

He snorts. "Isn't 'not right' the entire existence of a poltergeist?"

Maka doesn't answer, moving forward slowly. She places her hand on the door, and her eyes grow wide. "They're gone."

"What?"

"They're gone," she repeats, leaning close to press her ear against the door. "I felt them behind the door, but they just vanished."

She's reaching for the door handle when it hits Soul what's wrong with the church as he drifts back to get a better view. The warping of the darkness around the edges of the church dredges up memories of last Halloween in too vivid detail.

"There's a demon in there."

Maka jerks back, stumbling back a few steps. "I didn't sense that." Terror passes from her side of their bond to Soul, but she doesn't move from the entrance. She swallows. "We have to be sure."

Soul itches to run and forget the church exists-whatever waits in it isn't something that should be opened, something his mind screams at him over and over, louder than his whispers or hunger. But he can't leave without Maka, and even if he could, he wouldn't. "Maybe there is something else or maybe it's a demon playing tricks," he says finally. "But whatever is in there is bigger than us. We need to get help."

The scythe blade spins slowly in a lazy circle as Maka rolls the handle in her hands, mouth parting. A flurry of expressions, each of them instantaneous and unreadable, crosses her face. "It won't be here when we come back."

She presses the small silver button on her watch and holds out the scythe in a wordless question.

He is on the verge of explaining what a tremendously bad idea it is, that his facade of being enough will not hold up to this, but the words die in his throat when he meets her eyes. Her question isn't if they should go in or not, but whether Soul will follow her or not, and that answer has always been the same since he met Maka in Abeyance.

A rush of cold radiates from his chest out to his fingers as he possesses the scythe; it's something he can't get used to, even after months of reaping with Maka. In the beginning, it was hard to hold onto himself in the vast expanse of darkness that envelopes him when he possesses the scythe, but the sharp edge of emotions coiling inside of him now makes it easy to keep the boundaries of himself and the scythe separate.

He peers out from the blade of the scythe as Maka tries the handle to the church, the door opening soundlessly.

Soul sees the empty pews in disrepair and hymn books scattered across the floor first; a balcony wraps around the sides and the back of the church, curved wooden arches reaching up into the ceiling. The only light in the church comes the moon shining faintly from the stained glass window overhead, sending tiny rainbows that resemble cracked grins on the walls and floor. It is not enough to illuminate the statues lining the main aisle splitting down the center of the church, their faces shrouded in darkness.

The dread sprouting in Soul's chest grows as Maka walks inside, her footsteps bouncing hollowly against the walls of the church. There is a nearly inaudible rustling from the rafters, a movement of shadows that nearly slips past him, and he opens his mouth to warn Maka when she speaks first.

"There."

She doesn't point up towards the rafters, but directly to the shroud of darkness standing in front of the altar.

The wings emanating out of the creature's back almost consume them, wrapped around them so tightly that nearly nothing else is visible, save for the crown of their head. Whatever the wings are made of, they must act like a shield because Soul doesn't register the jolt he felt months ago until they reach the first pew. It resounds in his being, beating in his chest in a mockery of a heartbeat, and it is right as Maka pauses in front of them that he realizes this is going to go very badly.

(Hunger.)

"Who are you?" Maka's voice is too loud. He tries to keep his mind together.

They don't answer, although their wings drop ever so slightly. A soft mumbling comes from within, a frenzy of words that are impossible to make out

Maka raises her voice; her words crack against his head. "Did you come from across the rift?"

(Feed.)

Maka moves close enough that he can see how the wings ripple and swirl, not made of darkness at all. The skin at the base of their wings is almost as transparent as he is, the veins underneath an inky color.

Black blood.

* * *

Maka knows she made the wrong choice as soon as she steps inside the church.

The demon's aura nearly overwhelms her as she walks in further, but there is more than something off about the stillness inside of the church, the shadows that dance on the edge of her vision, and the fact that she can't feel Soul, although he is in her hands.

But then she sees the person hunched, surrounded by wings of darkness, and something about them strikes her as pitiful, even knowing they weren't human. She has to approach them, see their face finally, and that is when her mistake became irreversible.

She asks them once who they are; they don't answer, but their mumbling becomes faster. The scythe seemed to grow heavier in her hands too, becoming almost a chore to keep lifted.

She gets closer now and tries again, asking this time, "Did you come across the rift?"

They still don't answer, though their wings undulate at her words; they are more solid than darkness, but bend and coil like molten glass. She moves closer so she might be able to see their face at least, but their face is buried in their hands, which twist and untwist twines of their hair over and over.

Their fingers still suddenly, voice inching higher. "I want to be good, I want to be good, I want to be good."

Pity swells in spite of herself; the scythe drops to Maka's side as she opens her mouth to speak, but she's cut off as their voice rises to a crescendo. "But my blood is black, it runs and runs and runs, seals everything shut and then I see my blood is black."

The words sink in at the same time Soul de-possesses the scythe.

Maka stares up at him in disbelief. "What are you doing?"

His answer is lost as one of the wings shoots out; she dives away and slams into a pew, narrowly avoiding being impaled by the black blood, although that doesn't stop flecks of black blood from spraying onto her skin.

She chokes on her scream, unable to inspect herself, and can only swipe at it as the wings of blood grow high above their owner. The scythe is clumsy in her hands as Maka sprints down one of the side aisles and dives behind one of the pillars at the back of the church. She sucks in deep breaths, heartbeat a roar in her ears as she waits for the wings to find her.

Seconds that feel like eternity pass, and when her heart finally slows, she dares to look down at herself. Black blood is streaked across her clothes, climbing up her hands and arms in a trail of tiny specks. Her stomach convulses at the sight, but while the blood stings and clings to her like a second skin, it doesn't dissolve her skin or eat away at the rest of her body.

"Are you okay?" Maka bites back another scream as Soul appears.

Her hands clench around the scythe. "You left me, and you're asking if I'm okay?"

"I didn't-" There is a restless disquiet in Soul's eyes along with something else, something she doesn't recognize. "I can't-"

Maka's gaze falls to where he stares at the scythe, splattered with black blood, though it hasn't eaten away the metal, sticking to the blade like it does on her skin.

"It's the blood." She recalls how heavy the scythe felt in her hands before the attack. "It's affecting you."

His silence is her answer. "Come on." She doesn't wait for Soul to respond, peeking out from the pillar. The demon's presence is absent, like it fled, but she doesn't trust the feeling, eyes flicking up to the rafters before she looks towards the altar, to the person.

They're talking to themselves again, shoulders hunched as their hands twine together endlessly. Their wings have pulled back to them again, although they rove edgily around the space surrounding the altar, like they have a mind and life of their own.

The doors to the church are less than twenty feet away, but moving away from the pillar means going out into the open, and she doesn't know how the creature will react. She can't reap without Soul; their bond is what allows the scythe to work, and she doubts she'll be able to fight with the scythe alone.

It takes another minute to screw up the courage to step out from behind the pillar. Her heart climbs into her throat as she works to keep her footsteps quiet. While the wings stir towards her halfway to the door, the creature doesn't pry their hand away from their face, still muttering and fidgeting erratically.

She doesn't want to know what will happen if she does see their face.

Relief sweeps over Maka in a rush when her fingers brush against the cold metal of the door handle. She fumbles as she tries to push the door out, heart skipping a beat, until she remembers it opens inwards.

The door doesn't budge.

Memories of a smoke-filled basement and demons with burning eyes threaten to overwhelm her, but she fights down the panic trying to suffocate her, pulling on the door again as quietly as she can.

"Didn't I tell you I sealed all the doors?"

The creature's voice comes from right behind her; Maka lets out a half-scream, bringing the scythe up in an arc as she twists around.

"My blood seals everything." The tip of the scythe blade is wedged in one of the cracks that spirals towards the center of the creature's face, blood oozing out from around the blade and trickling down the creature's face in tiny rivulets.

"Even me." Their face is nothing but thorny cracks curving across where their eyes, nose, and mouth should be. They seem to grow the longer the creature stares at Maka.

Horror silences her yell; she yanks on the scythe, but it is stuck fast.

"My mother made me this way." The creature does nothing as Maka pulls, though she can't say the same thing for its wings.

Maka's composure disintegrates; she plants her foot in the middle of the creature's chest and yanks hard, letting out a grunt as the scythe dislodges itself and she collides into the church doors.

The creature tilts their head to one side. "Did your mother make you that way too?"

Maka then does something reserved for the desperate: she cracks the creature's face with the flat of her blade and shoves them aside as she shoots forward for the main aisle. She's halfway up the aisle when she comes to a halt, nearly tripping over her feet.

The statues lining the aisle have moved.

The statues, which aren't statues at all, stand huddled in front of the altar, heads looking up in unison at Maka. She was right when she said to Soul that they didn't feel like poltergeists, that there hadn't been something off about them.

They're alive.

Black blood entombs them; it seals to their bodies, compressing so tightly that it turns their own skin into a casket. They turn towards Maka as she skids to a stop; their bones stick out from their face, bodies disintegrating before her eyes, and although their expressions are frozen in various states of fear, a low, gravelly death rattle emanates from them.

They move slowly, unlike poltergeists, but it's clear what they're becoming. Beside her, Soul stares at them, transfixed. Maka raises the scythe, but she doesn't move backwards. "Stay away from me."

Her voice wavers, breaks on the last word, and she clasps onto the scythe in the same way she gripped her flashlight years ago. She doesn't dare look behind herself unless she loses her head completely.

Helplessness is a taste more bitter than fear, one she refuses to die with on her tongue. Maka readies the scythe for a swing as the poltergeists close in, even though she knows it's a useless effort.

A deafening boom resounds from the back of the church, knocking the scythe out of her hands and Maka to her knees. Dust stains the air and a ringing reverberates in her ears as she struggles to get to her feet and several large shadows streak by.

More sniffers, much bigger than the ones in the Death Room, weave past Maka as they make for the horde of budding poltergeists. They become a shapeless shadow as they reach the horde, seeping into their bodies like water.

The horde stops, movements slowing before stiffening into a standstill. For several moments, nothing happens, and then the poltergeist closest to Maka moves. Or rather, its hand spasms as the poltergeist begins to crumble into dust, limbs breaking apart with a sickening crunch before becoming dust as well.

A sniffer unwinds from the pile of dust that used to be a human being as the rest of the horde follows suit.

Maka is frozen, unable to keep herself from watching. The face of one of the poltergeists is turned upward as dust peels away its features into swirling clouds. It's the only poltergeist that kept its eyes open, and right before the spreading dust consumes the last of its face, she glimpses a mournful plea in them.

Sniffers pop up the piles of dust, unrecognizable from the dust wafting down from the ceiling. When Maka looks down, she notices her hands and the scythe are covered in dust. Her bond with Soul is nothing but static that sends claws running up and down her mind.

"And that is how you banish a soul."

Slowly, Maka turns around.

Azusa calls her sniffers back as she walks into the church. She's followed by no one, but the voices of Stein and Marie rise from behind her. Her eyes are alight with a simmering fire as she reaches Maka. "What happened?"

Maka opens her mouth to answer, and promptly throws up.


	11. Lacuna

Noun; Defined by a blank space or missing part.

* * *

There is a perverse, absurd hilarity in Soul unraveling in the exact way he vowed he wouldn't. He would laugh, if the universe hadn't already beaten him to the punch.

Everything is wrong. He is an aberration-he knew it from the moment Marie said that his existence was a mistake, although Soul had convinced himself that he could be an exception, that what he was supposed to become wasn't what he had to be.

His nails dig in his throat as he wanders down one of the hallways of the DWMA; the agency is inexplicably deserted for it being so early in the evening, though Soul takes it as a small mercy from the spiraling inferno that is called his existence. After what happened at the church, he can't stand letting himself be near Maka or anyone else, but he can't stand being alone in his mind either, so he roams as far as he can without triggering their bond. He reaches the end of the hallway and passes through to the elevator, catching a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the doors.

It's been months since he's allowed himself to look at his reflection; there should be scars and cracks crisscrossing down his face, marking him monster, and the fact that there aren't is strangely agitating.

His gaze moves from his reflection to the mission briefings lining the elevator, and a not-so-tiny voice informs him that he belongs up there. For months, Soul has worked to separate the whispers from the rest of himself, told himself as long as he didn't give into them that they meant nothing, but they are part of him as much as he's tried to pretend they aren't, mean something as much as he's denied it.

The elevator door opens with a sharp chime. "There you are!"

Horror overtakes Soul briefly when he spies blonde hair until he sees it's too transparent to be Maka's.

"Where have you been?" Liz reaches into the elevator when Soul doesn't answer, grabbing his wrist, though she immediately pulls her hand away. "You're freezing."

"I thought I wouldn't have to inform you that I'm dead." His patience is a frayed wire stretched taut. "Why were you looking for me?"

Liz's expression snaps shut. "Well, it wouldn't be out of concern." She folds her arms. "They're looking for you, I'm just the messenger."

Guilt pricks at him vaguely. "Thanks for the message."

"Yup." She twists around without waiting for him. "They're over this way."

He should say something, try to reach out to someone dead instead of living for a change, he thinks as he follows her out of the elevator and into the hallway. But conversations are ties to a person, help is for those who can change, and he deserves neither. So he keeps slightly behind her and they move in silence.

Liz speaks when they get to Marie's office. "They're all in there."

The way she stands aside to let him enter first feels akin to being accompanied to a firing squad, and the wild urge to laugh rises. He is going to lose his mind, and part of him, maybe all of him, isn't bothered by the thought at all.

Marie sits behind her desk, Azusa and Maka across from her, while Stein and Kid stand on opposite sides. He hates himself for how his eyes move towards Maka automatically-she looks marginally better than she did back in the church, though he changes his mind when she gets up from her chair. Exhaustion is worn into the spreading shadows underneath her eyes and her face is tinged with a sickly kind of pallidness, washing out the color from her skin, turning her into a half-ghost. The black blood that was embedded in her clothes and skin is gone, however, though he has no idea how Stein managed that.

The door closes behind him as Liz enters and moves next to Kid and her sister. Maka draws close. "How are you feeling?"

It takes him too long to remember that Maka assumes it had been the fault of the black blood that he abandoned her, and by then, he feels the others' eyes on him as well. He blinks and tries not to shift back. "I'm better."

The brief pause before Maka answers tells she doesn't believe him. "That's good to hear."

Azusa's chair squeaks as she twists around and her stare cuts into Soul. "What we need to hear is your side what happened in that church."

Her gaze is a scrutiny that Soul can't bear, but the room is a casket. He lies by omission, through silence and distance-he does badly with words and stories.

He starts with the truth and attempts to keep his mind together. "Maka sensed the horde first, but I only felt the demon." He supposes it's from the fact that they were still human, and he distinctly is not, but he doesn't say so. "They disappeared when we got to the church, and we decided to investigate. I don't know if whatever it was was waiting for us, or if we caught it off-guard, but we found it at the front of the church."

He works to keep his shoulders relaxed-Wes had always said it was his tell. "When we got close to it, I saw that it was covered in black blood. I couldn't stay inside the scythe."

Marie murmurs to Stein as he speaks, obviously translating for Soul. The scientist looks up. "And the poltergeists?"

"They were covered in black blood." Resisting his thoughts had overwhelmed everything else at that point, but the black blood of the poltergeists had sang to him, climbing to a zenith the closer they came. It'd frozen him, stuck between the horde and the creature. "Then you came."

Stein says something in Marie's ear once he finishes and crosses the room, leaving before the others can say anything.

"He's going to get something," Marie says. "An experiment."

Azusa makes a disgruntled noise, but her focus finally moves away from Soul. "Precisely what we need."

"And what did you see?" Maka pulls away from Soul to sit back down, fingers thrumming against the inside of the armrests. "Did you see anything?"

"We caught sight of the creature as it fled," Marie says. The faintest hint of a grimace crosses her face. "Your description of it and its wings were accurate."

"They didn't attack right away," Maka says. "They felt human." Her fingers still. "For a moment, at least."

"They have no trace or aura to speak of," adds Kid. "They are nothing near anything we have dealt with."

"Perhaps nothing we've encountered." Stein's voice is quiet as he re-enters the office, carrying a small box covered by a white sheet. "But something we have thought about facing many times."

"You're saying that it was a witch?" Azusa says. Her tone is skeptical, but the bent of her brow betrays a tense unease.

"Not completely." Stein pulls off the sheet.

There is little left of the rat in the cage, but what remains is completely blanketed in black blood. Its bones stick out in the same way that the poltergeists at the church did, blood stuck to it like a second skin.

Both Liz and Patti let out identical sounds of disgust and Maka's chair scrapes back as she tries to get as far away from the cage as possible. Even Azusa and Kid have looks of revulsion on their faces. Meanwhile, a dull roar swells in Soul's ears as he struggles to strangle the hunger the blood stokes in him.

"One of the rats got loose in the lab and had a very unfortunate run-in with the black blood," Stein says as Marie reaches over and plucks the sheet from his hand and puts it back on the cage. "Only a witch can do anything remotely close to this. Whatever this creature is, it's a miscreation, infused with a witch's powers," he says. "But what is more interesting is what's missing."

"Isn't there enough missing already?" Liz says, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

"Recently deceased people and animals leave traces of the soul behind," Stein continues. "We call it a soul wavelength." He takes a small machine that resembles a scanner from his lab coat and holds it over the cage. "Even something as small as a rat should have one."

The scanner doesn't react, not even when Stein brings it close to the rat.

There's a tense beat of silence. "So the soul was destroyed?" Maka asks.

"Not quite. The blood is clearly sticking to something, which means it has seeped into the soul somehow." An intense fascination enters Stein's voice as he pockets the machine. "It also means there were no poltergeists in the church. Their bodies were puppets."

Azusa's eyes grow sharp. "The souls-"

"Do as they always have done," finishes Stein. "Move on."

Kid follows their thoughts. "Which means they go through the rift."

"Covered in black blood. It's a fairly genius move for whichever witch created the blood." Stein takes off his glasses and wipes them on his lab coat. An avid curiosity ripples through his voice rather than concern. "There's already a tear in Orcus Hollow. Weakening the rift or creating small new rips in the area surrounding it might cause it to split open entirely."

"My father has been investigating murders like these," Maka says, eyes still on the cage. "The police thought they were acid attacks at first, but he told me it was some sort of sludge that was eating up their bodies."

"When did the first body show up?" Azusa asks sharply.

"November."

"Six months." Agitated disquiet simmers in Azusa's tone. "Why didn't I see this?"

"I didn't see it either," Marie points out. "Likely because of the black blood."

"Still." Azusa's hands clench, the biggest outburst of emotion Soul has ever seen from her.

"Why aren't I dead too?"

Maka's question cuts off Marie's reply, silencing the rest of the room. "There's no black blood on me." She holds out her arms. "Not even on my clothes and I saw blood on both."

There's a confused pause in the room. "We never saw any blood on you to begin with," Marie says finally.

"When they attacked, their wings sprayed black blood everywhere." Maka lowers her arms. "It got all over me."

"It didn't even leave a mark on her." Marie rises to get a better look. "Is it-"

"A Grigori soul," Stein says. "A soul that has both the ability to reap souls as well as purify and seal torn spaces in the rift. It explains the unusual pattern of your aura."

"The only other Grigori soul was one of the DWMA's founders," says Azusa. "Who lived before aura mirrors were installed."

"But it finally tells us how you and Soul were able to survive your time in the rift last Halloween," Marie adds. "By all accounts, it should have been impossible."

The look on Maka's face winds an uneasy feeling on Soul's face. "How long until the rift is broken?"

"It's hard to tell." Azusa shakes her head. "We've only been monitoring where the rift was torn. To examine and count how this creature has weakened other parts of the rift would take days, if not weeks, and we may not have that time."

"Not to mention how long it will take to capture the creature," Kid says. "It moves faster than any of us and is impossible to track."

"Why can't we do it again?" Maka says suddenly.

Marie frowns. "Do what?"

"Go into the rift." Maka's words unspool the knot of dread building in Soul's chest. "It doesn't stop the problem, but fixing the tear gives us more time to mend the other parts of the rift and to find the creature."

Waves of black blood descend upon Soul in his imagination. "You're really suggesting this after what happened in that church." The stares of the others are dead weights on him, but saying nothing is impossible.

"It's not the worst idea," Azusa answers. "It's likely the bond between your souls would be enough to force the rift closed. We would have to pull you out as soon as it happens, but it's doable."

"We would be able to go into the early reaches of the rift and take care of any poltergeists or other creatures there," Kid tacks on, glancing at Liz and Patti.

"We agreed it was too dangerous," Marie says flatly. "There are too many risks, including the fact that the rift might be torn open instead of being fixed." She looks at Stein. "Don't you agree?"

Stein is quiet for a long moment. "I agree with probability," he says finally. "And the probability we're dealing with is the certainty of waiting for the rift to break down versus the risk of failing."

Marie's face works furiously for several seconds before she abruptly deflates. She looks from Azusa to Maka and Soul. "It's your choice."

Maka gives a nod. "When?"

Azusa straightens, expression clinical and focused again. "There's things we need to check, so tom-"

"Wait," Soul interrupts. Hunger, the whispers, memories swirl in his mind, but he still can only find himself when he meets Maka's eyes. "What about my choice?"

"There's not much of a choice in this," Maka says softly after looking at him for a moment. She turns away before Soul can say anything else.

* * *

"It's not a good idea." The lights of Orcus Hollow blink into view as the road bends. "We should have talked about it."

"We did." Maka swerves slightly to avoid a pothole in the road. "And it's clear that it's our only option."

"That still doesn't mean we should do it," Soul argues, finally looking away from the window. "Or that you should feel pressured to."

"It's not pressure, it's-" She attempts to gather herself, exhaustion pressing down on her eyelids and thoughts pulling her in every direction. Too much has happened tonight, in the past months, in her life.

"I don't know," she says finally. "It's what should be done."

Soul doesn't answer; the distance in his eyes is bordered by a jitteriness that threatens to swallow him up. Maka's fingers twist around the steering wheel in a silent scream-caring for someone who refuses to ask for help is like holding water in her hands, driving her past impatience and frustration into an indecisive paralysis.

The porch lights are on as Maka pulls into the driveway. She runs her teeth over her lip, parking and pulling the key from the ignition, and speaks before she can lose her nerve. "I know you never wanted to do this," she says. "And I know whatever is wrong isn't getting better."

"I've asked more from you than I've given, and still asking for more." She looks at her hands in her lap since it's easier to talk without looking at him directly. "I just want to give as much."

"You haven't asked for anything that I wasn't willing to give." Soul's gaze is a low buzz on her skin as she lifts her head. "You don't need to feel guilty for anything else."

There's a pause. "If doing this is something you want to do, then you know I'm with you."

Maka meets his gaze. "I wish you were alive." Her reply makes no sense; she raises her hand to his face, fingers nearly skimming the air where his body should be. His eyes are an opaque crimson in the dark, wide and mesmerized. "I wish I could touch you."

The rest of Soul is frozen as he opens his mouth to answer, but Spirit's voice sounds from the porch instead. Maka jumps, and Soul jerks away as Spirit appears, gesturing for her. A trickle of irritation leaches into her tone as she gets out of the car. "What is it?"

"It's nothing." The anxiety on Spirit's face immediately tells her it's something.

Maka rolls her eyes as she walks into the house, her heartbeat a rapid thrumming inside of her chest. She can't look at Soul. "Did you lose a bet again?"

"Not quite."

Spirit isn't the one to answer, but Maka still recognizes the voice. Her eyes snap to the person sitting at the kitchen table.

Her mother looks up from her place at the table. "Hello, Maka."


	12. Abaddon

Noun; destruction.

* * *

At eight o'clock on a Saturday morning, the diner is completely devoid of customers. A medley of cheesy eighties songs hit Maka at full blast as she opens the door.

Black Star comes out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel. He says something that Maka can't hear, and she points to her ears, prompting him to disappear back into the kitchen. The volume of the music drops, and he reappears. "Your dad taking you out for another father-daughter day?"

"I didn't want to be home." She takes a seat at the counter, letting her bag drop on the seat next to her while Soul takes the seat on her other side. They haven't had a chance to really talk since last night, though she's had no time to think about what she'd say even if they did.

He raises his eyebrows. "Been a while since your dad got you that mad."

"It's not that," she sighs. There's only a split second of hesitation before she adds on, "My mom came home."

Black Star is speechless for once. His jaw works for several moments. "She's back?"

"Five and a half years later." Her laugh feels like it might devolve into a sob so she snaps her mouth shut. Thinking of last night gives her the same feeling as whiplash-her mother's visit had lasted no more than ten minutes, though she'd promised to come over for breakfast at nine.

Meanwhile, Black Star is still in shock. "You told me she had called and sent postcards, not that she was coming to visit."

"It was a surprise to everyone involved." Maka had said mostly nothing in the time that her mother was at their house, but Spirit had been incredibly civil, cordial even. How someone was supposed to treat their estranged wife after nearly six years was a mystery to her, but Spirit had managed it with more grace than Maka would have.

"Where is she staying?" he asks.

"I don't know." She shrugs. "Not at our house."

Black Star leans against the counter, propping his chin on his hand. "So, is this your hideout or are your parents coming here too?"

"We're supposed to have a family breakfast at nine," she says. "So this is my 'deciding if I want to go' place."

"You can only avoid the situation so much," he says. "You've already been doing it for six months." Black Star has a knack for pointing out facts with little tact but complete honesty. "What do you think more running is going to do for you?"

She makes a face at him as he returns to the kitchen, drumming her fingers on the counter. Her eyes fall on her reflection on its surface; the counter is made out of recycled steel, just as shiny as when Sid remodeled the diner three years ago, warping her reflection.

Maka traces the outline of her reflection. The way she deals with problems bigger than her is black and white: bury the problem or move forward by facing it head-on. She is not good with living with grey areas-they're unstable and irresolute, throwing her forward and back again in the same second.

Her mother shrouded herself in grey when she left.

Black Star comes back with two strawberry smoothies in hand. "I assume you haven't eaten," he says, setting a glass in front of Maka.

"You assume right." She pulls the glass to her and sips. The cold from the smoothie that spreads through her chest is comforting, chasing away some of the anxiety coiled in her stomach. They drink in silence, listening to the music meld from one song to the other.

"Is your mom the reason why you've been so busy?" Black Star asks shortly after Maka finishes her smoothie.

She fiddles with her straw. "Do you think so?"

He shakes his head.

"I can't talk about it," she says to his unasked question. It's hard to resist looking at her phone for the text that Kid promised to send when they were ready for her to head to the rift. "But it's nothing that I can't handle."

"Or the bad kind of illegal?" he asks.

As far as she knows, there's no law against killing the dead. "Definitely not."

"All right." Black Star seems to relax at that. "I was worried."

Maka smiles. "I appreciate it." Checking her watch, she drains the last of her smoothie. "Well, I have to get going if I want to be on time for this breakfast."

Black Star takes her glass and meets her eyes. "If you need to get out of the house while your mom is there, you could always come here."

A buzz from her phone disrupts the lightness being in the diner has fostered. Maka fights to keep her smile natural. "Thank you."

She pulls her phone out as soon as she walks out of the diner. On the screen is only one word.

Noon.

* * *

If Maka looks at her mother directly, she thinks she might shatter, like an illusion or mirage.

There is nothing delicate about her mother, Maka knows that, but she also thought she knew that her mother would never leave, so she takes precautions. Childish thinking, her mind chides at her, but she can't help it. Sitting across the table from her mother makes her feel like a child again, though not as secure as when she was one.

The gaze of her mother is an icy scorch on her skin as they eat; the only comfort comes from Spirit, who eats next to Maka, and punctuates the silence with occasional comments about the weather, the remodeling of the police station, and the new theater opening on Walton Street.

Her mother answers back with comments of her own: the fashion styles she's seen in Paris, the canals of Venice, and the lights of Tokyo. Maka, for her part, answers the questions that her mother asks her about her grades and classes, about Black Star and Tsubaki.

They all dance around talking about the five years that have passed since they last had a meal together. It's confusing to Maka, another grey area, which is an unstable foundation for a relationship, but she says nothing. Spirit has made pancakes for the occasion, complete with bacon and scrambled eggs. He and her mother clear the table when they're done while Maka rinses off the plates and puts them in the dishwasher, like they used to when she was younger.

Spirit's phone rings just as Maka closes the dishwasher; she recognizes it as his ringtone for work, unchanged from the one he set it as when he first got the phone. Her mother recognizes it as well, judging by the way her mouth presses into a line for an instant.

His expression becomes tinged with sheepishness as he ducks out into the hallway. Maka becomes intensely interested in the dishwasher settings; Soul disappeared upstairs as soon as her mother arrived so she can't look to him to cause a distraction. When a minute passes and her excuse to look down runs out, she busies herself with putting away dishes from the day before. She doesn't look at her mother-she's not sure what would happen if she met her eyes.

"Sorry." The sound of footsteps announce Spirit's return. He has his hair pulled into the ponytail he wears for work. "There's been a series of murders around here and Moricio over the past few months," he says, looking at Maka's mother. "They just found another body in the old part of Orcus Hollow."

Maka's stomach lurches.

"You need to go." There's no judgement in her mother's voice, though Maka is sure it is there in her eyes.

"Unfortunately. It looks like the murder is recent so we might be able to pick up on a trail." Spirit's tone is apologetic. "You're welcome to stay here until I get back."

There's a pause, and then her mother says, "Thank you."

Maka raises her head when she sees Spirit's boots appear in front of her. She tries to come up with a reason, any reason, to keep him here-she doesn't know if the creature is like poltergeists or if they can attack during the day. But it doesn't matter because she can't come up with anything, not even the flimsiest excuse, because he won't listen even if she does and all she can do is look up at him.

"I'll be back as soon as I can." Spirit pushes back one of her pigtails. "Are you going to be okay?"

She doesn't know if it's a lie or not when she nods.

When the front door clicks closed, her mother turns towards her. "Let's go somewhere."

Maka focuses on the lapel on her jacket. Enduring the same stilted conversation they had at breakfast for anywhere from another couple hours to half the day would be unbearable, so she nods again. "Let me go get my jacket."

A rush of freezing air hits Maka as she opens the door to her room. She rubs her arms, perplexed. Her eyes fall to Soul, who sits in the middle of the room and peers down at the scrapbook she gave him at Christmas.

She gets a glimpse of two faces as the book snaps shut. "That was the only picture I could find of you and Wes." She crosses the room and picks up her jacket. "You looked serious for an eight year old."

"Children whose smiles look like a jack-o-lantern generally don't smile often." Soul rises from the floor, the scrapbook floating with him. "But Wes would smile with his mouth closed when we took pictures, so that helped."

He glances at her jacket. "We're going out?"

She shrugs. "Not much of a choice in it."

"And the rift?"

"The scythe is in my truck," she answers. "We'll get there on time."

"All right." He mirrors her shrug; he seems to be avoiding talking about last night as well, which vaguely bothers Maka, though she can't bring it up now. "How is the reunion going?"

"Weird," she says as they leave the room. "Too weird."

* * *

The radio in Maka's truck gives up on life halfway through the trip to Moricio, plunging Maka and her mother into an awkward silence punctuated by sudden bursts of static that only becomes more awkward when one of them speaks.

Her mother points out the hotel she's staying at, a pretty brick building with pillars running down its front, and Maka pulls into one of the spaces in its parking lot. There is a forced lightness in her mother's voice as she talks about the hotel, as if constant activity will blot out Maka's memory. She glances at the scythe in the truck bed as they leave the truck, an anxious nervousness looping in her chest that only grows when she looks at the time on her phone.

There's a few minutes of them walking aimlessly (now would be a good time to bring up the unspeakable, but her mother says nothing so she says nothing). Then her mother spots a sprawling outdoor city market and Maka follows her to it. The scent of flowers from the flower stands set up at the end of every aisle is heavy in the air and mildly nauseating. She loses sight of Soul in the crush of people crowding every aisle, and the same sense of unreality that came over Maka when Spirit first told her about her mother unfurls and spreads over her again.

When her mother points out different items at the stands and shares a little snippet about something related to her travels, Maka nods and feigns interest. Emotion is distant at the moment, but the longer she spends time with her mother, the more she feels the absence of the relief she was expecting, or the anger and sadness that strangled her for so long.

It's odd that she feels nothing at all, when she spent the last six months agonizing over just calling her mother. Perhaps it's the shock of her arrival or anticipation of what is coming later that is numbing her, but one thing is clear: this is not the mother she lost, but some kind of doppelganger, a poltergeist. Her mother spoke directly, but this mother only evades.

The bell tower near the market begins to toll eleven, and Maka swallows. She doesn't know how to deal with the dead when they are still living.

The pain hits after the last toll of the bell fades into echoes bouncing off each other; it slams into Maka's head like a sledgehammer and she doubles over, clutching the sides of her head. She gasps, trying to push on her knee so she can force herself up. It feels like fire ants are eating her alive from the inside out.

It startles her when an arm raises her up. The pain vanishes as abruptly as it appeared as her mother leads her over to an empty bench. "Are you okay?"

Maka lowers her hand from her head. "You're asking me that?"

The buzz of the market fades away as Maka waits for an answer, eyes fixed on her mother's hands instead of her face, but it's clear where she learned her silence from. Her mother shifts finally. "I'll get you some water."

She had been wrong to think she had no anger left. "You don't want to talk about it, but you made me deal with it."

"Being here when I was feeling the way I was would have only hurt you," her mother says finally. "I didn't want you to deal with that."

"All it does is make you being here now hurt me." Maka blinks suddenly and furiously at the stinging in her eyes. "Why did you come back?"

The sun bounces off her mother's shoes. "I wanted to see you, talk to you."

"For how long?"

Another pause, and then, "What do you want now?"

"For you to be here tomorrow." Maka gets to her feet and looks at her mother in the eyes. They have traces of her green in them, but not as much as Spirit. "But for now, space."

* * *

How do you kill something that is worse than dead?

The question replays in Soul's mind over and over as he waits outside of the city market. The thought is marginally better than the other thoughts and feelings that drown his mind in an endless loop, but when he thinks about what caused it, he is halfway tempted to rip his head off and see if that answers his question.

Brushing through the woman had been an accident, his mind tells him, the result of being too focused on finding Maka in the massive crowd. The sheer amount of people, the pulsing of their souls, had been overwhelming enough, had turned his hunger into a budding inferno. So when Soul's arm went through the middle-aged lady pausing at one of the stands, his reaction had been more instinct than thought.

(Maybe it hadn't been an accident.)

He reached out for her soul; it was like fruit from a tree, unprotected and hanging in front of him to pluck. There had been a moment of hesitation before he touched the woman's soul, but the hunger was bigger than him, was all he was.

(It must have been the same way for Giriko, he remembers thinking in some faraway part of his mind.)

When his fingers had scraped against her soul, a rush of pain had swept through him, crushing him as it cleared his head. He watched as the woman's normal color began to return to her face, which had turned a pasty white, and then forced himself away.

He went as far as the bond would allow, eventually returning to the entrance when he felt Maka move. She's looking for him, he feels it in the way her soul comes closer and away again as she wanders down the aisles, but he won't go back in the market.

A light drizzle mists down from the light grey clouds overhead. Soul lifts a hand and a few drops freeze in the space above his palm. Maka wants him to be alive, but he doesn't deserve to even want that. His hand drops and the raindrops fall to the ground. He used to think that it was only certain parts of his mind that were rotten, but now he knows it was all of it.

"Found you!" Maka pops into Soul's vision, gesturing for him to come and garnering a strange look from the people entering the market, but she ignores it and flips her hood up. "Let's go."

He follows and gathers himself enough to speak when they reach her truck. "Your mom?"

"Staying here." She grabs the scythe from the back and wedges it in the front seat, its blade hanging out of the passenger window. As they drive out of the parking lot, she begins to talk, but Soul only half-listens.

The hunger hadn't died down like it usually does when he distances himself from its trigger, sliding into his stomach like the tip of a knife. Maka is too stuck in her story to notice the way he fidgets, keeping his gaze fixed on the scythe blade instead of risking a look at her. His eyes move to his reflection, warped and inhuman. It shouldn't exist, but no matter how many times he blinks, he's still there.

"I think I needed that." Maka's voice makes him jump. Her gaze is concentrated on the road, the rain thickening. "It wasn't all I needed to say, but it was a start."

"Good," he manages to say. "I'm glad."

Maka nods. "So am I."

They lapse into silence. Maka turns off the asphalt and onto a dirt road as they get closer to old Orcus Hollow. "I don't know if the rain would have chased the police away from the town or not," she muses aloud. The truck rattles as she drives through an uneven part of the road. "Kid said he would meet us at the trail up ahead so we're going to end up walking either way."

"Fun."

"For the person who doesn't get affected by the rain, maybe." She glances up at the sky hopefully. "Though it seems that it's let-"

The demon is only visible for a split second, perched on the truck's hood, eyes pitch-black except for two scarlet irises. With a yell, Maka swerves, and the demon disappears, while the truck tips on one side dangerously.

The instinct to protect is still stronger than anything else; Soul stills the truck with a colossal effort. The side of the truck tipping over sends up a cloud of dust as it rights itself and its tires connect back on the ground with a large groan.

The aura of the demon is thick in the air as Soul peers out from the truck's roof and scans the area; reality is not unpeeling itself like when they faced off with the mosquito demon, but he doesn't trust it.

He drops back into the truck to find Maka wincing as she rubs her head, although she doesn't seem bleeding or injured. "Are you okay?"

"I think so." She pulls her hand away, reaching for the scythe. He possesses the scythe as Maka's hand closes around the handle. "Kid texted me that the demon was still somewhere in Moricio."

"It moves fast clearly." His mind screams at being so close, though he's not sure if it's in elation or horror. "Could you call them?"

Maka holds up a hand, showing the smashed face of the watch Marie gave her. "No cell signal either."

She gets out of the truck and walks to the front of the hood; black streaks like scorch marks stain the car metal where the demon had touched. "Not sure how I'm going to explain that to my dad."

"Your truck got hit by lightning."

"Four times?"

"That's the way bad luck goes sometimes."

"A lot of the time, more like." Maka tugs down on her hood strings and begins to move forward. "Might as well start our walk now."

The rain continues to fall as they walk. Rolling hills crest between the dirt road and the road that runs parallel to it and leads to old Orcus Hollow, which mutes any noises or lights from the police cars in the town, if they linger.

"Do you think that winged person is still there?" Maka asks when they round a bend, and the forest that killed Soul looms into view.

"Why do you think they're a person and not a monster?"

"I'm not convinced they are." His view of the forest shifts as Maka adjusts her grip on the scythe. "But something felt human about their words at the front of the church."

"And then they showed their face," he concludes.

"They said their mother made them like that," Maka argues. "They weren't like that when they were born or created."

Too many memories echo in his head as he shrugs. "Doesn't matter what you were, it matters what you are."

"I don't th-" Maka breaks off. "What is that?"

Ahead of them, at the mouth of the trail, is a shadow figure. It almost looks like the creature from last night at first glance, but it moves with the wind, like it's stuck on marionette strings. It is the monstrous form of a child's stick figure, tall and spindly, with overlong arms and fingers.

The demon's scent is extremely faint, and not pulsing as it would be if it were still around. "It could be a trap," he says. "But I don't think it's the demon."

Maka stops twenty feet away from the shadow figure. "So what do we do?"

The figure continues to stay motionless, except how it sways in the wind. Its arms resemble a pair of crooked pitchforks now that Soul is closer, and it's completely faceless. It almost looks harmless, nearly blended in with the trees.

"Go around?" he suggests. "If it's a trap, then maybe it only attacks when it gets set off."

Maka stares at the figure for another beat before heading off the path. She keeps her face towards it as she eases into the brush, slowly making her way through the forest. The shadow figure stays as it has been, but Soul gets the feeling that it's tracking them somehow the longer he looks at it.

He sees it just as Maka reaches the treeline. It moved.

Maka's head snaps back in the direction of the figure. It doesn't look closer to me.

It moved its head. The move had almost been too subtle to notice, but the twist of its head had been too deliberate to be the wind.

Kid should be around here. She begins to move again, though more slowly. If we find him-

Her thought is cut off by a whistling much higher than the wind. Maka reacts in time to deflect the shadow's fingers off the scythe blade and dive behind a tree. The tree trunk reverberates with the force of the shadow's other fingers sinking into it, and she scrambles away from the tree.

It's hard to see anything with Maka running, but Soul catches a glimpse of the shadow moving as it stalks them. Although it's solid, it moves like a monster in a nightmare, transporting from one spot and another. The shadow's arms and fingers have grown longer, almost dragging across the ground.

He loses sight of it as Maka tears past a row of closely grouped trees, and when it doesn't reappear, he thinks they lost it. Then, Maka comes to a stop, intaking sharply.

The shadow seems taller up close than when they first saw it as Maka swings the scythe back to strike, but the head of the shadow figure explodes in a burst of light before she even starts to swing the scythe forward.

Kid drops down from the tree above. "That was close."

"A little too close." Maka rights the scythe as Soul leaves it. There's no trace of the shadow on the ground or anywhere else. "Did you see the demon who made that?"

"We caught wind of it as we were checking the boundary of the forest," Kid replies. "Stein has an old police scanner and heard about the discovery in Orcus Hollow." He pauses. "Is it-?"

'It's another victim of the creature from last night," Maka confirms. They start to move forward as they talk, Liz and Patti separating from Kid's pistols in a bright flash of light. "And the thing we just saw-"

"An outgrowth of the demon," Kid answers. "Similar to a puppet, but they can move."

The reapers' voices fade as Liz and Patti fall in line with Soul, one on either side of him. They move in silence for some time; there are parts of the forest that are familiar as they get closer to the swamp, but Soul is not as on edge as he imagined for visiting the place where he was murdered. Part of him attributes it to how he and Maka came in a different way from the first time he visited the swamp, when his memories were still buried away, but in truth, there isn't much that distracts him from the mangled mess of his mind anymore.

"We're going into the rift with you part of the way," says Liz, breaking the quiet. "The witch's curse will drag Kid into Abeyance if he gets too close, which is why we can't fix the rift."

Soul looks at Kid. "How do you know that?"

"Personal experience."

On his other side, Patti is unusually somber, although she perks up momentarily. "It's going to be cool to see the rift closed though."

"And a giant weight off our backs," Liz adds on.

Having expectations thrown on him that he's not sure he can meet isn't a foreign feeling to Soul, but it's not something he needs to be reminded of. Nodding and allowing his silence to be taken as confidence is an easy enough mask to wear, however.

They emerge from the swamp fifteen minutes later. Marie, Stein, and Azusa are the only ones there, along with the teenager and twins that Soul saw last Halloween. Marie looks up as the group draws closer. "We're almost ready."

"I thought there would be more people for something like this," Maka says as they come to the table the three are sitting at, a giant umbrella blocking out most of the rain. A tent is set up behind them, filled with several machines that buzz and whir loudly.

"Having more than a few people with our abilities is like a magnet for poltergeists and other things," Azusa answers. "Kilik and I have been banishing poltergeists since we started setting up this morning."

Soul glances at the trio, who stand at the treeline, although they sneak peeks at him and Maka as they do. The twins eye him warily, like they're not sure if he's something to be feared or not.

His attention is drawn back by Stein's voice. He holds a machine that looks similar to the spidery one that he showed them months ago. "Calculations from our machines show that the tear now takes about twenty minutes to reach. At Halloween, it would have only been a few minutes away." Stein hands Maka the machine. "This will guide you to the tear and back out again. However, if you're not out of the rift within an hour, the machine will set off a distress signal and we will pull you back." He gestures to an anchor buried in the ground some distance away from the swamp.

Maka eyes the rope attached to it. "If something in the rift doesn't break the rope immediately, won't it run out?"

"The rope is thousands of feet long and it's made out of material similar to kevlar, although it's more flexible and stronger," Azusa answers. "Same as the outfit we made for you."

"It isn't exact, since we weren't expecting you to go into the rift," Marie says as she gets up and disappears into the tent, returning with a long-sleeved black shirt and matching pants in hand. She hands Maka a pair of gloves as well. "But it should fit well enough."

"I guess we'll see soon enough." Maka takes the clothes and heads into the tent.

Soul drifts to the edge of the swamp as they wait. No one follows him, either too preoccupied with preparations or otherwise. The little island that Giriko's house was on has vanished-there is no sense of closure in seeing it gone, just like he gets no peace from looking through Wes' scrapbook. There is no solace to be found in either because it is for the living, not the dead.

Turning away, Soul goes back to the camp to wait for Maka.

* * *

The pants are slightly too long, but they're fine when Maka tucks them into her boots. Her heart is a rapid drumming in her chest that slows only marginally when the swamp is out of sight. Her breaths come out quick and short as she tugs on her gloves; she holds her breath as she picks up her scythe and waits until her heartbeat is normal again to exhale.

Taking a few more breaths barely does anything to help her nerves. Maka clenches her hands into fists and squeezes as hard as she can before she crosses the tent to leave. It doesn't help her find any calm, but it keeps her from feeling like she's about to explode.

Soul is outside of the tent while the others are back at the table. He looks in her direction as the tent flap swings back in place. "You look ready."

A nervous laugh ripples in her voice. "Something like that."

Marie turns at the sound of them, smiling when she sees Maka. "Glad to see they fit all right."

"For the most part." Maka moves closer to the table. The rain has turned back into the drizzle it was when it first started. "What now?"

"We go out to the rift." Marie holds out a harness similar to a rock climber's, pointing to a small boat at the edge of the swamp that she hadn't noticed.

Azusa makes sure her harness is secure once Maka has it on. "Few poltergeists have come out of the rift in the couple of hours that we've been monitoring it," she says, clipping the rope on the hook around her waist. "You shouldn't see much coming through in the rift in the time that you're in there."

"And if I can't fix the tear by the time you pull me out?" Maka asks abruptly. "What then?"

"Do the most that you can do." Azusa steps back. "We'll take it from there when you get back."

Maka nods. Her words aren't very comforting, but her honesty is.

The boat rocks back and forth as Maka, Kid, and Marie get in while the ghosts drift above. Maka squints as they start to row out to the place where Giriko's house used to stand. She was expecting to see something like a hole in the air, but she sees nothing. "Where is the rift?"

Marie points down. "There."

The nervous dread Maka has been fighting resurges.

They get to the spot too quickly. The foundation of Giriko's house is submerged about a foot beneath the water's surface. Marie sets down the oars, pushing back her hair. "The tear is about halfway down to the bottom," she says, pointing to a space between two points of the foundation.

"The tear is only big enough for one person to fit so you'll have to swim down one at a time," Marie says. "Kid will go first. Make sure to give yourselves a minute to adjust."

"We have to go into the water?" Liz says, frowning. "It's dark."

"It'll be darker in the rift," Patti tells her in a mock whisper.

"Don't make her more nervous than she already is." Kid is wearing a harness like Maka, though he doesn't appear as anxious as she feels. "Make sure to close your eyes, Liz."

"You don't need to remind me," she grumbles as she and Patti disappear into the pistols.

With a nod, Kid drops into the water. It swallows him up quickly as he dives down. Maka tracks him by sensing his aura, a bright gold-orange. It fades slowly as he swims before disappearing abruptly.

"He's through," Marie says. She turns to Maka and gives her a smile that is meant to be reassuring. "Good luck."

Maka tries to give her the same kind of nod Kid had, though she says nothing, or she thinks she might throw up like last night. She glances at Soul, who thankfully understands her look and possesses the scythe.

Lowering herself into the water is an action that nearly breaks her composure, though the freezing temperature of the swamp drives her fear from her mind temporarily. Then phantom sensations of clammy hands pulling her into the depths skim across the skin that's exposed, and her hands tighten on the side of the boat, instead of reaching for the scythe.

"There's nothing there," Marie says before Maka can ask. She offers her the scythe handle. "I promise."

For a long moment, Maka stares at the handle, and then takes it. She kicks out to the spot that Marie had pointed out, though it's slow going with the scythe in her hand. Her connection with Soul is constricted; she can only feel him if she reaches out, but his presence is enough to steady her.

Leaning her head back, she treads water once she reaches the place above the rift. Her nerves had kept her from sensing the rip before, but she feels it now; it's like a black hole, not pulling at her feet but at her soul.

Sucking in a deep breath, Maka tugs the scythe underneath the swamp surface and dives.

* * *

Soul has the strange sensation of moving vertically before the world suddenly becomes horizontal again. The dimness of the swamp has gone out, exploded into a sea of pitch-black. It disorients him, and he blinks several times before the roaring in his mind reminds him exactly where he is.

Maka's face is barely visible; he feels rather than sees her barely contained panic.

It takes a gargantuan effort to speak. Hey.

She latches on immediately. Hey.

Still here?

Yes, you?

Lying is not easy when their minds are connected. Yes.

"Good." Maka turns, and he feels her panic ebb. He wishes he could say the same for his mind; it's turned brittle, like glass about to shatter, so he looks around to keep from thinking. Behind Maka is a wall, though when it ripples Soul realizes it's the water of the swamp.

"Maka?" Kid's voice makes them both jump. He only comes into view when he's a couple feet away. He holds the flashlight he had attached to his harness in his hand, although the beam cuts through only a few feet of darkness before vanishing.

"Sorry, I was testing how far I could go," he says, gesturing behind him. His eyes don't glow in the dark here. "The entrance of the rift is about as far as I can go."

"It's okay." Maka unhooks the machine Stein gave her from her harness, before they set off with Marie in the boat. She puts it on the floor and switches it on. It glows in the dark, though its light doesn't travel far either. "One hour, right?"

Kid checks his watch. "A little more than fifty minutes, actually. Time moves quicker here, I believe."

"Wonderful." says Maka under her breath, unlatching the flashlight that Marie gave her. She lets go of the machine and it starts to scurry away. "See you in almost an hour."

They've moved away no more than ten steps and Kid already sounds far away. "Good luck!"

The rift seems to move in time of Maka's breaths, her grip around the scythe iron tight as they follow the machine. Her footsteps are swallowed up by the rift, replaced by a soft murmuring that melds with the thoughts crawling down the seams of Soul's mind.

Many things writhe and wriggle above them and underneath Maka's feet. She skirts away from them when the creatures come close, but none of the monsters seem interested in attacking; on the contrary, they seem to veer away when they get too near. The low mutters of the rift continue to sound in Soul's ear.

The rift is alive-it knows Soul, calls to him, whispers to him. It should horrify him, but the only thing he feels is disgust that it doesn't.

It takes him a minute to realize Maka is talking to him through their bond, and when he does, it takes another moment to make sure that his side of their bond is only open enough to let her thoughts in.

What is it?

I was thinking about how we should have a movie marathon after this.

A movie marathon. His response is too short, but he can't risk poisoning her mind, too.

You need to see The Iron Giant. The sting in her thoughts from his tone is muted. I think you'd relate to him.

Maybe. He snaps his mind shut.

(The fact that he doesn't deserve her has never been as obvious as it is now.)

Something shifts, the rift constricts abruptly, and the machine comes to a stop. Maka looks up; the darkness appears as seamless as ever. "Where is it?"

It takes minutes of watching before they finally spot the ripple of grey light gleaming through the rift. Ahead of them, Abeyance is only visible for an instant, but the burning cold emanating from it is too familiar.

(Feed.)

"It doesn't seem that big," Maka says, pacing down the length of the rip when the light pokes through again. She stops alongside the middle of the rip. It seems to have shrunk from what it was in the beginning, though only barely. "I know Azusa said that we only needed to be here but-"

Maka reaches out with the scythe and tries to hook the blade around the edge of the rift.

Soul is burning, he is losing his mind, he is hungry.

He isn't aware that he's out of the scythe until a hand brushes against his face.

Maka's eyes glimmer in the half-light of Abeyance. "I can touch you," she whispers.

Insideinside inside Soul finally breaks.

And then the world shatters.

* * *

"It's not very nice in there."

Maka whirls around; the darkness seems to weep where the creature steps. They have a face today-the innocence in their eyes stands at odds with the wings unfurling from their back.

"I didn't want to do any of this," they say as they lift their hand. In a fluid motion, they cut their hand against the edge of their wing. Blood flows out of their hand, but it does not pool on the floor, but solidifies into a sword.

They move towards Maka slowly. "But you don't get a choice in what you do sometimes."

Maka brings the scythe forward in an arc. "Soul."

He doesn't move from where he's crouched down on the floor; the person draws closer, lifting the sword. "You don't get a choice in who leaves you sometimes, either."

"Soul!" Maka brings up the scythe just in time to block the blow from the creature.

She stumbles backwards from the blow, nearly losing her balance. She continues to backpedal-the scythe is nothing without Soul and their connection.

The creature's moves are precise and destructive; she's out of her league and they both know it, but the creature doesn't seem to press their advantage. Maka manages to block three more of their hits with the scythe's blade before they land a blow on its handle and she feels it bend in her hands.

She retreats, keeping her eyes on the rip and the creature, breaths coming out fast and shallow and her hands shaking. Running back into the rift for Kid would be the smart thing to do, but the rip in the rift is still open and she refuses to leave without Soul. He hasn't moved from where he kneels on the floor.

Swallowing hard, Maka risks moving closer to the creature, although she doesn't attack, feinting to one side and shoots forward to Soul. She misjudges her steps in her panic, barely avoiding crashing into Soul by grabbing his shoulder. She shakes him once. "What are you doing?"

Soul's hand folds over hers, scorches her skin, and makes her breath stick in her throat.

Maka can't move.

She is burning; it feels like she is being eaten alive. Soul is in her mind, but nothing makes sense. Everything is too loud, he won't talk to her, she is being shrunk down and dragged to the corners of her mind.

Maka can't let go of the scythe nor can she pull away from Soul-something inside of her chest is splitting, being ripped out of her, though there's nothing touching her.

She's disappearing.

* * *

The hunger breaks him; he can't remember himself. It spreads through him, erasing everything he is and was.

His mind is in shreds, or perhaps it's whole-it's the same thing to him.

All he cares about is the shining soul he is possessing. It's impossible to reach inside for their soul with their hands, he finds after a few attempts, so he draws himself out of the soul.

His hand is curling around the soul when he hears it.

"Soul?"

The voice is quiet, warm and familiar.

Green eyes with flecks of gold blink up at him. "Soul?"

Soulsoulsoul.

Soul is his name.

"Maka." The name falls from his lips, and his fingers move from above her chest to her face. Her skin is warm, unlike his.

Her fingers graze over his skin. A thousand memories flood in with her touch.

When I asked you to stay, I meant it for everything.

Soul stares down at his hands, feels the hunger twist in him again.

He looks at Maka.

This was not everything.

* * *

Maka staggers to the side as Soul disappears from her mind, bowed over the scythe and on her knees when she opens her eyes. She sucks in breaths, rapid and shallow. It takes an enormous effort to raise her head. "Soul?"

He stands a dozen feet from the mouth of the closing rift, staring down at his hands, although his head lifts when she calls his name. The dark of the rift is too thick to see his face.

Maka's knees are shaking as she steadies herself. The creature is nowhere to be seen, though she doesn't care much about it. She isn't completely sure what happened, but she knows it's not Soul's fault.

Maka repeats herself. "Soul?"

He turns, and she sees what he's about to do before he does it. "Soul!"

The scythe clatters to the ground as Maka bursts into a run. She runs, even as a voice in her head tells her that she won't make it to him in time; but she has to see his face, she has to see his eyes.

Soul's name tumbles out of her mouth, even though she knows he won't respond to it. She reaches for him, although she is too far away, too slow. She just has to see his face.

Maka reaches the edge of the tear as it mends itself together, and swallows Soul with it.

Her hands wrap around nothing.

And then, with a small tug, her rope pulls her back.


	13. -the lights are extinguished

Abeyance seems to be one great forest, but Soul encounters no spiders, a small miracle. Creatures seem to avoid the rift, with the exception of the overcurious and the stupid.

It's a mild disappointment, since he planned to let himself get eaten or gored to death (again). He's not sure what dying again would mean for him, but he assumes it isn't good, something he sincerely hopes for.

His problem is fixable; he's sure plenty of monsters live in the forest, but he's also just as sure that witches live in there too. So he walks against the edge of the rift, which seems endless. The hunger grinds at him, but he welcomes the pain.

He does not allow himself to think of Maka.

There is no sun or moon to mark the days, just a constant twilight, so Soul makes a line in the ground for every dead beast he spies poking out of the rift. He's just marked his twelfth find when he hears a snapping noise from the tree above him.

A face with golden eyes smiles down on Soul. "We welcome you."

* * *

The last time this happened to Maka, a hole bigger than her split open inside of her.

This time, nothing happens.

It's good, she decides as she sits on the bed, holding Wes' scrapbook in her lap. It's growth, she tells herself. Life hurts and life breaks, and if she broke with it every time, then her sanity would never survive it.

Water drips from Maka's hair onto the scrapbook, and she tries to rub it away with her sleeve until she realizes her clothes are just as soaked. She had left as soon as she had made it out of the swamp water; everything else is a blur, but she remembers how steady her hands had been as she drove home.

Spirit is still out, and her mother hasn't called, though she figures she should call her soon to see when she's coming over tomorrow.

She rises; there's no use in putting off the inevitable, and she needs to change before Spirit gets home. The scrapbook is cradled in the crook of her arm as Maka makes her way downstairs-there is no fighting that she needs to shelter herself from, unlike last time, and this is also good, she informs herself. It means change.

Her strides are long and sure as she walks down the driveway and to the trash can at the edge of the street.

She pauses after she flips it open. Hugging the book would ruin the cover, and she put in many hours creating it and sewing the book together. Instead, she opens the book to a random page.

A young Wes smiles at her, close-mouthed, and next to him, smiles up an even younger Soul.

Maka stares down at the picture for far longer than the three seconds she promised herself she'd take.

When I agreed to stay, I meant it for everything.

A sharp ache lights in Maka's knees as they strike the asphalt.

She doubles over, holds the scrapbook to her chest, and sobs.


End file.
